'A 



i. 



RECOLLECTIONS 



OF A 



New England Town 



BY "FAITH" 

(MRS. FRANCES A. BRECKENRIDGE) 



MERIDEN, CONN. : 

The Journal Publishing Company 

1899 



: O 



y^s lys 



7 



INTRODUCTION. 



'T^HE interest that attached to the articles on old-time Meriden 
by "Faith" (Mrs. Frances A. Breckenridge), as printed 
originally in The Meriden Daily Journal, led to the belief that 
published in book form they would prove entertaining, not only 
to present and former Meriden people, but to the readers of 
New England generally; for Meriden as described in "Faith's" 
quaint way in the following chapters, is typical of the New 
England villages of the first and second quarters of the century. 

To the newspaper articles have been added many chapters 
on subjects that cannot fail to engage the pleasant attention 
of all who would like to know what rural New England was 
like half a century and more ago. 

One great value that the work has is the absolutely correct 
historical information that it contains. What is told here is 
authenticated by carefully preserved family records, and personal 
knowledge of the author. 

The character of the men and women who lived here two 
generations since will surely be better understood and appre- 
ciated when one has seen them through the eyes of " Faith." 

Thos. L. Reilly. 



CHAPTE'R I. 

THE EARLIER TRADITIONS. 

'T^HE southwestern part of Meriden, says Rev. Geo. 

■*■ W. Perkins, in his "Sketches," and Dr. Chas H. 
S. Davis in his " History of Meriden," was claimed by a 
small tribe of Indians, ' ' The Mattabesitts. " Mr. Daniel 
Parker, who was born and lived all his long life at the 
homestead and farm, lying on the eastern slope of the 
hill west of Hanover Village, told the writer that his 
grandfather, from whom he inherited his property, 
knew and had told him the names of certain large 
rocks at the southern bank of the Quinnipiac River. 
These rocks were prominent features of the river side 
until the raising of the dam at the cutlery works set 
back the water and changed the aforetime rapid river 
into a broad and placid lake, and thus submerged the 
rocks. These rocks may be even now identified at low 
water. 

Unfortunately, Mr. Parker could not recall their In- 
dian names. There is still a flint arrow head in the 
keeping of an elderly person that was picked up in 1848 
near the "Copper Mines" at the Walnut Grove Cem- 
etery. 

It has been pretty definitely conceded that Meriden 
was named from a parent town in England. The 
names of Wallingford and Cheshire were thus derived. 

When the very sparse number of settlers and the dan- 
gers and diiBculties which beset the traveler at that 
early date are taken into consideration, the idea of 
' ' Merry Den " revelries hardly seems consistent. There 



4 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

was no " Public " to speak of, and the few who traversed 
the country went for business, and were far more likely 
to be a grave, sedate and watchful people than to be 
given to wild and noisy merry-making. 

By 1725 the name was identified with all the tract 
lying between the steep, rocky fells on the east, north 
and west. 

About that year a meeting house was built near the 
foot of what is at present known as Buckwheat Hill ; a 
burying ground was also set off near the summit of the 
hill. 

Tradition has it that the location was disputed and 
quarreled over, a method of settling vexed questions 
not altogether unheard of at this era. 

Those whose farms lay at the west of the Old Colony 
Road, and those whose farms lay close to the eastern 
hills, and those at the " Plains," each and all of them 
miles from each other, severally wanted the new meet- 
ing house near as possible to themselves. 

The east side people seemed to be the most deter- 
mined, for they drew the lumber in the night over the 
hill to some spot selected by them. 

Somehow, those who carried away the materials at 
night were made to bring them back by day, and there 
seems after that to have been no more difficulty. 

A cold, bare and comfortless place must that meeting 
house have been in winter. In summer things would be 
better. 

Those who attended public worship rode on horses, 
with saddles and "pillions," carrying double, for there 
was not then or for years after anything with wheels, 
except the most primitive ox carts, anywhere within 
miles. The Sunday nooning by the spring (never 
known to be dry from that far-off day to the present), 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 5 

must have had something the aspect of a sedate and 
solemn picnic. 

But, oh, the dreary winter funerals! Nothing of 
softness or grace or beauty was allowed to mitigate the 
gloom of the Shadow of Death. 

It would have been thought indecorous to lay a flower 
upon the coffin made to order by the nearest carpenter, 
and outlining as nearly as possible the form of the body 
it enclosed, sometimes clumsily lined, oftener not, some- 
times stained and varnished, often left the color of the 
elmwood boards, but sometimes painted acrude blue color. 

In those days the term "bearers " had a meaning of 
its own, and the coffin with its burden was carried on 
men's shoulders up the steep slope to the roughly dug 
grave. 

The words of the prayer and the benediction were 
fairly blown away by the wind as it swept across the 
bleak enclosure, bare of either tree or shrub or creeping 
vine. 

Before the year 1779 the meeting house had vanished, 
but the foundation stones were there for many years after. 

Many of the old brown headstones were still to be 
seen in the cemetery until late in the forties. One by 
one they had been broken down, or had been built 
into the surrounding wall. 

Some years ago, chiefly through the efforts of the 
Hon. Dexter R. Wright, then a lawyer in Meriden, a 
monument was raised on "Burying Ground Hill." 
This monument records a few names of those buried 
there. 

The last burial on this hill took place more than a 
century and a half ago. 

By far the larger number sleep there unknown and 
unremembered— " Nameless here for evermore." 



CHAPTER II. 

FIRST FACTORIES. 

TN 1833 Meriden was considered to contain between 
two and three thousand people within the town 
limits. 

This population, if so many there were, was mostly- 
distributed in groups. These were known as "the 
Center and the Corner" in the middle of the town, and 
Clarksville, Prattsville, Webbsville and Hanover in the 
outskirts. 

These divisions were at some distance apart — three 
or four miles in some instances. 

Very prominently to the memory comes the picture 
of the vividly red building at the head of Prattsville 
Pond on the east side, with "Clock Factory " painted 
in brilliant white letters three feet long on the side 
next the turnpike, and so placed that the attention of 
the stage passengers might be attracted thereto. 

A very striking piece of color the building made, 
standing so near the stream that sometimes the shadow 
beneath the water was nearly as distinct as the sub- 
stance above it, shaded by the hickory, oak, chestnut, 
maple and butternut trees of the first growth that grew 
on the east side of the stream, with an undergrowth of 
birch, sassafras, sweet osier and dog-wood — for all 
these grew there, each with its own peculiar tint of 
green. 

Doubtless the impression was deepened and the retro- 
spect retained from the fact that one pair of beholding 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 7 

eyes were fresh from the sand-barrens of South Caro- 
lina, where one could dig an inch or two into the sand 
and find smooth, yellow clay, and cut into it as one 
might cut into a n'^w cheese, and fashion from it dolls, 
marbles and even doll's furniture, which could be hard- 
ened in the sun. 

True, at the South, the yellow jasmine hung from 
the trees, and the sweet shrub, which was not a shrub 
at all, but looked like a little red-leaved weed, perfum- 
ing the air with its fragrance at the slightest stir, and 
the trailing arbutus, larger and more fragrant than it 
grows at the North, could be found in February 
wherever there was a grove of trees other than 
pines. 

All these were very well if one had nothing better, 
but they were as nothing to the lovely green turf of the 
North and splendid dandelions, the swaying wind- 
flowers, the liverworts, the white bloodroots, the blue 
violets, and not least, the lovely but, as one soon found 
out, despised houstonia. 

All these beautiful and, to the young, unaccustomed 
eyes, rare blooms were to be found around Prattsville 
Pond. 

Although even the tradition of a manufactory of 
clocks in that locality has nearly been lost from the 
annals of the town, yet it was in its day, and for that 
period, an extensive business interest, having a branch 
in Montreal and another in Nashville. 

All the movements of these clocks were made of 
wood. Some of the cases were elaborately carved, 
really hand carved, not pressed into different forms. 

The upper part of the clock doors were of plain 
glass of course, but the lower part would be decorated 
in oil, with landscapes and brief truisms, such as 



8 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

" Time Flies" or "Time is Money" (the latter not so 
true after all). 

But more often were depicted the smiling and amiable 
aspect of a young woman, with her hair dressed to kill, 
as was the mode of the day. 

Right here one may be permitted to wonder how 
under the sun those wonderful braids, puffs and im- 
mense bows of hair were constructed, that were the 
fashion at that time. 

False hair was only permitted to elderly ladies, who 
wore "fronts" of aggressive blackness and falseness. 
The very blackest and falsest being always the Sunday 
one. 

These clock faces, if they had been preserved, would 
be far more accurate exponents of the costumes of the 
period, than any of the fashion plates of that era. 

The brothers Benjamin, Ira and Hiram Twiss were 
the business firm. 

Ira was the manager at Montreal, Hiram at Nash- 
ville, Tenn., and Benjamin divided his time between 
Meriden and Montreal. 

Like most of the enterprises of that day, this one 
sought the market by sending out "peddlers," who 
were not in the least disconcerted by the appellation, the 
term being simply the equivalent of the " salesman " of 
a later day. 

The factory itself, although one of the most imposing 
at the time, would now be considered a very small 
affair indeed. All the decorating was done by two or 
three young women in a shop no larger than an ordi- 
nary pantry, located back of the dwelling house at the 
southwest corner of North Broad and Britannia 
streets. 

After a good many prosperous years the firm failed, 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 9 

owing, it was said, to the mismanagement of one of the 
partners. 

The property once owned and occupied by the firm 
in Montreal is said to be, in the year of 1898, worth 
more than a million dollars. 

After the failure of the clock business, Ira Couch 
started in the same building, early in the forties, the 
weaving of webbing. 

There was nothing significant about that, except that 
Edwin Curtis invested some money in the concern. 

Those who were familiar with Mr. Curtis and his 
peculiar traits of character would know this to be very 
remarkable. 

There was every reason for expecting a profitable 
result, but Mr. Couch contracted typhoid fever, which 
terminated fatally. He was the lasit of three brothers, 
who died in early manhood of the same disease. Mr. 
Curtis could not be induced to go on with the venture, 
although urged to do so, therefore the business was at 
once ended. 

Although it is not, perhaps, exactly germane to the 
subject, it seems impossible not to pay a tribute to the 
courage and energy of Mrs. Couch. 

The method of settlement left her with exactly ten 
dollars. After recovering from the suddenness of the 
blow, she set herself to the work of providing a home 
and livelihood for herself and three young children, the 
youngest a baby boy about two years old. 

Being a woman of superior taste, she settled herself 
into a fashionable millinery business, brought up her 
three children excellently, and having long before 
bought the present site of the Winthrop Hotel for a 
few hundred dollars, sold it for as many thousands. 

Mrs. Couch died at an advanced age, much beloved 



lO RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

and respected by those who had known her as a practi- 
cal exponent of woman's ability, let the "rights and 
equality " be where they may. 

The old clock factory was finally burned down, and 
there is nothing now to indicate that any structure of 
the kind ever stood on that spot. 

The trees fell long ago, and a railroad track stretches 
along the bank where their shadows once darkened the 
stream. 

The wintergreen and arbutus, the yellow and the 
white violets that were plentiful on the eastern bank of 
the pond, have been cultivated out of existence for a 
lifetime. All of it is now " but a picture that hangs on 
memory's wall." 

A low dam of logs, with luxuriant ferns growing out 
of the crevices, retained the water which formed the 
small reservoir of Prattsville Pond. 

This was the water power for the ivory comb works, 
if the little shop at the south end of the dam could be 
dignified by the title. 

Sometime in those years the dam above at Baldwin's 
mills gave way, and the pressure of the escaping water 
carried the Prattsville dam with it. 

A higher and more substantial dam of stone was 
built, which, although repaired from time to time, is 
practically the present one. 

The dam at Baldwin's mills was rebuilt, but was 
made much more secure at a later period. 

The ivory comb business must have been started in 
the twenties, for in 1833 it was well established. 

At that time the relations between the employed and 
the employer were essentially democratic. The former 
usually found a home in the family of the latter, with 
a full welcome to all social privileges. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. II 

If for any reason this was not practicable, the em- 
ployes were located in some family of known respecta- 
bility and religious character, and a strict watch was 
kept upon their morals and manners. 

Ten o'clock was the regulation hour for retiring for 
the night, and to be absent from the house after that 
time was a matter for minute investigation. 

Indeed, so exact and strict was this rule, that when 
Mr. Pratt's oldest son gave what was at that day called 
"a wedding party," which was held at his father's 
house, his father insisted that the guests should leave 
at ten o'clock, and they did. 

The character of an applicant for employment was 
inquired into and sifted before a favorable answer was 
given, and a church member had the preference. The 
result being, as might have been expected, a literal in- 
dorsement of St. Paul's dictum — that faith without 
works is dead. 

Although the social methods of dealing with those 
employed were democratic, the hours of labor were 
despotic, fourteen and fifteen hours being the general 
rule. 

In the summer the hours were from sunrise to sun- 
set, with intervals of three-quarters of an hour for 
breakfast and half an hour for dinner. 

During the shorter winter days breakfast was at six 
(or before), and work began at half past six. Four 
days in the week the working hours were from half 
past six in the morning until nine at night, with an in- 
terval of half an hour for dinner and another half hour 
for supper. 

As Saturday night was religiously kept, the comb 
factories shut down at a quarter to five. 

Wages averaged from $1.25 to $2.00 per day for men. 



12 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

Women scarcely earned more than fifty cents per day. 
Board for men averaged perhaps $2.00 per week. 
Women paid seldom more than $1.25, often not so 
much. 

It must have been about 1833 that the eleven-hour 
movement was started in Boston, if one does not mis- 
take. Strange as it may seem now, it was bitterly op- 
posed, but finally triumphed by its innate righteous- 
ness. 

The three ivory comb factories in town in the early 
thirties were each of them painted light blue, with 
white trimmings. Why such colors should have been 
considered the proper insignia of the ivory comb busi- 
ness is a conundrum without an answer. 

The largest one, in Prattsville, bore on its front the 
sign, " Howard, Pratt & Co." 

The second in importance was owned and conducted 
by Walter Webb at Webbsville. This was afterwards 
partially rebuilt and known as Parker & Whipple, 
Much enlarged, it is now, in 1898, the Parker Clock 
Co., with Theodore F. Breese as manager. 

The third, and the smallest of the comb factoriesi 
was located in the village of Hanover, just below the 
present dam, which was then only about as high as an 
ordinary chair. This one was owned and managed by 
Philo Pratt, and was short-lived. 

The methods of comb making were the same in all 
three of the factories. 

The factory in Prattsville stood directly at the south 
end of the dam. The buildings, one supposes, must be 
spoken of as two stories in front, but the windows in 
each story were only of half length. At the back it 
was one story, and the only entrance was on that side. 
The "office " was a wooden desk fastened to the wall 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. I 3 

opposite the door in the main work room. Here Mr. 
Julius Pratt sat on a three-legged stool, and here he 
received visitors, transacted business and arrived at 
conclusions. 

The machinery used was very primitive. No con- 
cern, however small or insignificant, would in these 
later days even look at any appliances as crude as were 
those, then thought quite progressive. 

Certain young persons used to watch with breathless 
awe the wonderful man who entered the open shed 
called the wheel-house, and passing over the narrow 
plank above the water, with his own marvelous hands 
threw on or off the leather belt which caused the wheel 
(about as large in diameter as a small tub) to revolve 
or become stationary, and thus controlled the rush of a 
cataract that one did not doubt resembled, if it did not 
rival, Niagara Falls in splendor. 

The great ivory tusks, too, had been carried over the 
hot sands of Africa, and had sailed over leagues of 
ocean before being finally deposited on the floor of a 
New England factory. 

Often it would happen that the conveying ship would 
fail of a full cargo of ivory. When this was the case 
the failure was supplemented by a balance of dates and 
coffee. Whenever this happened those interested were 
expected to take each a certain proportion of the latter 
commodities (and pay for them). 

Thus it came to pass that pure Mocha coffee in bags, 
sewed together with fibre from the date palm by dusky 
hands in the far eastern country, and not opened until 
they reached a New England kitchen, was a common 
beverage. These coffee berries looked like small dried 
peas. They were improved by keeping. 

Dates also were used and eaten in such quantities 



14 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN, 

that if there is anything in the food theory they ought 
to have made chronologists of the whole village. 

One proof of the futility of that theory may be ad- 
duced from the fact that among the most diligent de- 
vourers of the sticky fruit, was one individual who 
could never be perfectly certain in what year Columbus 
discovered America, or the precise date of the Puritanic 
debut on Plymouth Rock. 

The ivory tusks, always four or five feet long, some- 
times six or seven, in rare instances, nine or ten feet, 
were sawed into blocks or lengths in the lower room 
facing the road. 

The one upper room was reserved, except the office 
corner, for the finishing processes. 

The ivory blocks were again sawed into slices or 
plates, as they were called. The plates were put into 
a leather-cased wooden block held in the left hand, 
while the roughness left by the sawing was removed by 
a sharp knife or "scraper." 

The tooth cutting was done by fastening the ivory 
plate into a small, vice-like machine, and the cutting 
accomplished by a movable saw. 

The polishing and cleansing the interstices or brush- 
ing was done by machinery, but the "setting" or 
straightening the teeth, which were apt to be crooked 
after the sawing, v/as done by a small steel tool in the 
hands of an expert, who thus straightened even the 
finest teeth one by one. 

The finished combs, of varied degrees of fineness, were 
of substantial thickness, for at this early period ivory 
was comparatively cheap, and the life of the material 
was not then kiln-dried and bleached out of it. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE "SABBA'-DAY" HOUSE. 

COME years before the turnpike road between New 
York and Boston brought in a new era. A Con. 
gregational meeting house had been built on the spot 
where the Center church now stands. Larger than 
the first one on "Meeting House Hill" (for this was 
the name of the hill until sometime in the thirties), it 
was very likely a better built house, but almost equally 
as bare of interior comfort. 

An ancient lady born in Meriden in 1779, from whose 
lips most of these reminiscent odds and ends were 
taken, perfectly well remembered the old " Sabba'-day " 
house that stood just south of the church. Part of the 
foundation and cellar wall were there as late as 1838. 
This " Sabba'-day " house was a sort of joint stock con- 
cern owned by some of the church members who lived 
too far from the church to go home and return within 
the hour-long (or short) noon intermission. 

The one room had a fireplace, and the fuel and a 
barrel of cider were provided by " joining." 

It must have taken some constancy of purpose to 
leave the warm fireside for the frigid atmosphere of the 
meeting house from the present point of view. It 
seems likely enough that a sense of duty might compel 
some of the party to stay and see the fire properly taken 
care of. 

This property (the land) was owned by the Rev. Mr. 
Hall. It was afterwards bought by John Butler, and 



1 6 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

his son, Lyman Butler, built a house very nearly where 
the old " Sabba'-day " house stood. 

This house (in 1899) is owned and occupied by Mrs. 
Lyman Butler and her daughters. Here also was, and 
is still, a well of delicious water flowing from a spring 
never known yet to run dry. This spring supplies the 
house, and also furnishes the adjacent factories of Chas. 
Parker with drinking water. 

In this second church there were no more means for 
warmth than there had been in the first one. The 
seats could not have been much better than mere 
benches, for it was told of an elderly woman, now liv- 
ing, that when a restless child she slipped from the seat 
and made her way under the benches, on all fours, to 
the door, till finally she was captured by her dismayed 
pursuers on the last step. 

Something there must have been in the hearts and 
minds of those bretliren and sisters of that former time 
differing from ours, this later day, to sit as they did, 
Sunday after Sunday, in the carpetless, cushionless, 
fireless, comfortless room, and listen devoutly through 
the hour of the long prayer which the minister might 
not curtail, to the singing keyed from the pitch pipe of 
the two or three tunes which were never changed from 
one year's end to another. And then to the hour- 
long sermon, which might not be shortened, although 
it might be, and often was lengthened. 

There is something pathetic in the thought of those 
hard-working men and women sitting patiently, hour 
after hour, on the hard benches, looking intently up to 
the high pulpit, trying to obtain some spiritual rest 
and refreshment, while from that altitude the " doc- 
trines " were expounded. Predestination, foreordina- 
tion and election were argued over and over to the 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 1 7 

confusion and utter bewilderment of the hearers, and 
one suspects, maybe, of the preacher also. 

The merciful love, the everlasting patience of the 
Divine Fatherhood had no place in that austere system 
of opinions. 



■ CHAPTER IV. 

ANECDOTE OF THE REVOLUTION. 

T)Y 1 79 1 the turnpike road from Boston to New York 
had been projected, disputed, quarreled over and 
built. 

The completed work was held to be a most wonder- 
ful achievement, quite as great for that time as its suc- 
cessful rival, the railroad, fifty years later. 

From Hartford to New Haven the old turnpike runs 
almost directly north and south. The contractor, one 
Mr. Peck of New Haven, affirmed his determination to 
make a straight road between the two cities if (as he 
profanely declared) it took him through hell. 

Wherever the low, swampy ground required filling 
in willows were planted thickly by the roadside. Where 
the grade of the road was raised and the ground dry, 
Lombardy poplars were planted equally thick. 

The turnpike stock was eagerly taken, and was valu- 
able for many years. The elder Dr. Hough invested 
largely in it, and the earnings made a fair income for 
many years for those of his family who inherited it. 
After the railroad was built it became valueless. No 
modern failure of stocks has brought with it more con- 
sternation than did that turnpike stock failure bring to 
one family when it was decided that it must be entirely 
thrown away or sold for a few cents a share. 

But that came to pass later. I am a little premature. 
Before the growth of the town had begun, while yet all 
citizens, except the minister, doctor and the store- 
keeper, were scattered on isolated farms, there was not 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. I9 

wanting what at this distance of time seems like roman- 
tic incident, but probably most commonplace enough 
to those most nearly concerned. 

Deacon Ezekiel Rice would often tell, his aged eyes 
filling with tears, at the recollection of seeing, when 
peace was declared after the Revolution, the women 
running from house to house waving their aprons and 
crying for joy. For life had been hard for them in 
those years of trying to be a nation and to have a 
country. 

On the other hand, an ancient maiden lady used to 
get rampantly indignant while rehearsing to her partly 
scared, partly amused and partly sympathizing listener 
the story of how her " honored father " was not allowed 
to pass the limits of his own farm in the western part of 
the town, he being a rabid Tory and thus liable to be shot. 

A story told of at least one other town in New Eng- 
land was certainly told the writer, of a family who lived 
at the eastern side of Meriden, how the summons for 
joining the army having come suddenly, suitable cloth- 
ing had to be provided, and that at once, only having 
twenty -four hours to do it all. So they sheared a white 
sheep and a black one, mixed the wool, carded it, spun 
it and wove it, and then made the mixed black and 
white into a suit of clothes, which the soldier wore when 
he left home. The women sat up all night to do it. 
This story has been told of more than one New Eng- 
land family, and was doubtless true of more than one, 
for the daughters of Eve are resourceful. 

Another local story belonging to the days of the Rev- 
olution could never at least in after years be impartially 
judged. 

A Meriden man, a Tory, carried his principles so far 
that he went to Canada and joined the British army. 



20 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

While absent from Meriden he married an English 
woman of good family, a daughter of an English officer- 
When the war was over he came home. While on the 
way two infant daughters were born. His wife the 
mother of one, the elder, by a few days, a servant girl 
the mother of the younger ; the man the father of both. 
The penalty of such a crime, if proved, was then 
of extreme rigor; even death in extreme cases, and this 
one, taken up as it was by the thinly scattered but 
severely moral public, was considered a most heinous 
affair. 

Arrest and a trial followed. Then the woman and 
wife arose, and having, as she afterwards said, "taken 
gunpowder and rum to give her courage," she took oath 
that both babes were "bone of her bone," and "flesh 
of her flesh," justifying her act by saying that she and 
her husband were one. The same woman insisted that 
all her new-born children should be immediately 
plunged -into cold water. The wife of Dr. Hough, when 

told of this, observed that " Mrs. ought to be put 

into a tub of cold water herself." This remark was 

never forgiven by Mrs. as long as she lived. She 

used to wither by its repetition an unlucky great-grand- 
daughter of Mrs. Hough whenever an opportunity was 
given. 

The two sisters, while young, were called twins, but 
after the death of the wife and mother this was repu- 
diated by the elder. The two lived to be very old. 
The elder died at home, but the younger, who outlived 
all the family, died at last at a great age at the town 
farm. The forsaken body rested for one night in St. 
Andrew's church, and thence was borne to its name- 
less grave, thus ending a story that began more than 
a hundred years ago. 



CHAPTER V. 

SOME OF THE OLDER FAMILIES. 

T TNTIL about 1785 the real center of the town was 
^-^^ the corner of Curtis and Ann streets. On the 
spot now known as Ann street stood a low, rambling 
red house. A tragic interest was connected with the 
place, for in it a little boy had shot and killed his sister. 
She was buried in the old Broad street cemetery, and it 
is said this was the first burial there. Nothing more 
than this is known of the family. 

Dr. Ensign Hough lived in this house for many years, 
and here all his children were born. His sister, Mind- 
well, married Daniel Curtis and settled in a dwelling 
house that stood east of the Edwin Curtis property on 
Curtis street. She was the great-grandmother of the 
family of Curtis, so long and honorably identified with 
the public interests of Meriden. 

The first tavern in Meriden was, of course, the his- 
torical and somewhat mythical "Belcher Tavern." 
But the first one in the center of the town was the 
old house removed, as told before, to make room for 
the residence of Edward Miller. 

The first store, it will be remembered, was also in an 
addition to this dwelling house or tavern. This was 
before the turnpike was laid out. Travelers came into 
or left town by the old Colony road, or by what is now 
Curtis street or by Wall street, then known as the 
Westfield road. When the turnpike was finished, and 
the stage route between Boston and New York fairly 
opened up, Meriden began to look up in the world and 



22 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

to see the need of providing for the traveling public. 
The following scanty chronicles were gathered in the 
talks with Mrs. Sally Bradley, the daughter of the first 
Dr. Hough and the sister of the second. 

Mrs. Bradley was born July ii, 1779. She said her 
father moved into and opened what is now spoken of as 
the old tavern "just before she was twelve years old." 
This, of course, fixes the date as 1791. The location 
once occupied by this old inn is almost exactly half way 
between the old state buildings in the two capitals, 
Hartford and New Haven. There used to be a mile 
stone just about opposite Olive street on the east side 
of Broad with " XVII. miles to New Haven " upon it. 
Another one stood just north of the Odd Fellows' build- 
ing on Broad street with "XVII. miles to Hartford" 
upon it. It used also to be said that the house stood 
only twenty miles farther from the state house in Bos- 
ton than from the city hall in New York. Probably, 
however, this only meant from the terminus of the 
stage route in either city. The tavern was famous 
along the whole line. 

The two Dr. Houghs, father and son, were men of 
education. A library, and not a small one, was a feat- 
ure in the house. A good farm belonged to the place. 
The great barns north of the house were ample in their 
room for animals, and the yards swarmed with all sorts 
of poultry. The great garden was laid out in terraces, 
that descended nearly to Center street. Apples and 
pears, the earliest to ripen, as well as the latest, were 
abundant. Great cherry trees grew close to the house, 
and peach trees, gooseberry and currant bushes edged 
the terraces. Even in 1835, when the writer's memory 
of the place begins, this garden and orchard were in the 
spring a mass that, to the eye, seemed almost dense of 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 23 

glowing color, and on fair, dewy mornings the vicinity- 
was almost heavy with the fragrance. At the present 
time (1899) one old pear tree still remains at the north- 
west corner of the present dwelling house. An ice house 
was also an adjunct. Most of the large farms could boast 
of a " spring house," but an ice house then was a rarity 
anywhere. This one was the only one in town. It 
was simply an outdoor cellar at the northwest corner 
of the house, surmounted by a four-sided, pointed roof, 
with a ball at the apex, as it remained in the memory 
of the writer. 

A young nephew of the younger Dr. Hough selected 
this ice house as a hiding-place when it was only par- 
tially filled. Somehow he slipped and fell. He was 
found with his back broken, and only lived a few hours. 
Mrs. Bradley said that the front of the house was a 
green yard, with a row of Lombardy poplars. These 
trees were for some unaccountable reason at that period 
great favorites. A few specimens are still to be seen 
along the old turnpike road through the country. 
They are tall, ungainly trees, and in their old age 
almost destitute of foliage. Mrs. Bradley said these 
trees were soon removed, being in the way, as their 
manner of growth is totally unfitted for shade, and, 
besides, not being in the least ornamental. 

The interior of the house was the common and con- 
venient one of the period. A wide front door opened 
into a square hall, from which ascended a narrow, 
crooked stairway. On either side doors opened into 
spacious rooms, each with its fireplace. From each 
room a door gave access to the great kitchen, in which 
the whole space between these doors was taken up by 
the vast fireplace and the capacious brick ovens. A 
bedroom opened off each end of the long kitchen. 



24 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

Each of these bedrooms had also a fireplace and man- 
tel. An addition contained the pantry and dairy. In 
the second story a wide hall ran through the house. At 
one end it opened by a half glass door upon a balcony 
that ran across the front of the house over the front 
door. Into this long hall all the chambers opened. 
Each of these chambers also had its fireplace. In each 
and all of these rooms, both upstairs and down, fires 
were kept during the cold months. Wood was plenty, 
and there seems to have been no lack of help about the 
place, outside or in. In the kitchen the helpers were 
the farmers' daughters of the town, who were glad thus 
to vary the monotony of their home life. 

One of these girls professed herself "ashamed" of 
Mrs. Hough's flaky pie crust. " It broke to pieces," 
so she said. "Her mother's," she remarked, "did 
not break a bit when it was cut." One of the girls 
became the victim of a strange disease. Her joints 
enlarged until they almost reversed their normal posi- 
tion. She lived almost ninety years, and was cared 
for and supported by members of Dr. Hough's family 
until her death. 

One of the men employed was an oddity, who never 
would hurry no matter what happened, but who "ac- 
complished as much as anybody and more than some." 
"If he came into the house he brot^ght an armful of 
wood ; if he went out he took something that ought to 
be carried out." He was wont to say that "he never 
hurried but once, and then he did not get anything for 
it." He ran some distance down the road with a pair 
of gloves left by a stage passenger, who did not even 
thank him. 

Another noted character in the family w^as a colored 
boy named Prince Duplex. He always asserted himself 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 25 

to be a son of an African king. Of his record any man 
might be proud. It was said of him in the four years 
of his stay he never told or even acted a falsehood. He 
was diligent, thoughtful and always respectful. "He 
was rightly named Prince; his character was noble." 
He went to New Haven, married, and was for a great 
many years sexton in one of the churches. He died at 
an advanced age. If any of his descendants are living 
they may well be proud of their ancestor. 

A contrast to Prince was a black imp named Fred 

Cable. Fred went into convulsions of snickering when 

Dr. Cogswell of New Haven, who was blind, being 

-helped from the stage by Fred, asked him " if he was 

Dr. Hough's son." Dr. Isaac Hough was a bachelor. 

Another hanger-on was an old colored party who 
bore the classic name of Priam. He lived " over east," 
but did odd jobs about the tavern. An enormous porker, 
when killed and dressed, was found to be what is called 
"measly," and therefore considered unfit for use. Un- 
daunted, Priam said he "wasn't afraid of nothin'," 
begged the carcass, carried it home, and he and his 
numerous progeny flourished mightily thereon. 

The east front room of the tavern was the bar room, 
and was also the post office. The mail brought by the 
stages was spread out for inspection upon a table set 
apart for the purpose, and afterward placed in a rack 
affixed to the wall. As in most New England hostel- 
ries, the bar-room was the village club room, the social 
center of the men of the town ; the place where politics, 
local and national, were discussed; where theological 
points were argued, and where party spirit ran high, in 
due proportion to the depth of party ignorance. 

The costumes of the two doctors, father and son, 
were thus described by Mrs. Bradley. They wore knee 



26 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

breeches and long stockings, with buckles at the knee. 
The elder man wore his hair long, combed back from 
his forehead and braided in a queue, tied with black 
ribbon. Both wore frilled shirt bosoms, and at the 
wrists ruffles of fine lawn made and done up by the 
daaghters of the house. Clear starching was then con- 
sidered an art and taught as such. The ruffles, when 
starched and ironed, were laid in tiny pleats, each care- 
fully laid down and creased by the thumb nail. The 
strain on the hands often caused a serious affection of the 
tendons at the wrist. The younger doctor, Dr. Isaac 
Ira Hough, wore this costume long after it was discarded 
by other gentlemen. He used to say he was sorry he 
ever left it off. He was an enormously large man, but 
had small, delicate hands and very small feet. He was 
exceedingly autocratic in his manner and conversation, 
and considered himself, and was generally conceded to 
be an authority in most of the world's doings, from na- 
tional affairs to washing dishes. 

The drinking or tippling habit was universal. The 
supplies for the bar were kept in the spacious cellars. 
One great barrel was always kept filled with New Eng- 
land rum and wild cherries. Once it became necessary 
to renew the cherries, and the refuse, was thrown into 
the barn yard. The multifarious live stock partook 
greedily, and the result was literally too comical for 
words. All of the barn yard denizens were very drunk. 
" Most of the fowls lay upon their backs, and the pigs 
could not walk straight. An old sow lay and squealed. " 

By 1820 travel had greatly increased. Eight stages 
stopped every twenty-four hours at the tavern. About 
that year a ball-room was added to the house. This 
ball-room was a counterpart of most country ball-rooms 
of the period, the ceiling being somewhat arched, with 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 27 

a low platform at the upper end. A bench ran around 
the room against the wall. This ball-room was opened 
by a wedding. Hubbard Merriam and his wife were 
married in it. The bride at the time was a member of 
the Hough family. For a good many years it was the 
scene of the local courts and auctions, now and then a 
a church fair or a concert took place there. 

To the old tavern came at one time or another nearly 
all the notable people of the first forty years of the cen- 
tury. Wadsworth, of Hartford Athenaeum fame, was 
often there ; also Hillhouse, whose name will live while 
the New Haven elms flourish. "Squire Hillhouse 
always called for baked beans," and sensible man 
that he was, insisted on eating them in the warm 
kitchen. "Professor Silliman of Yale College was 
there a great deal." The poet, Percival, also fre- 
quented the house. " He would order his dinner, then 
take a book, and forgetting all about his food, would 
read for two hours, standing all the time." Edmund 
Kean and Chas. Kemble stopped there when driving 
from New York to Boston with a private carriage and a 
pair of horses. 

The writer well remembers standing on the balcony 
and looking down as President Andrew Jackson stood 
up in a barouche at the southeast corner of the build- 
ing. He was bareheaded, and held a soft felt hat in his 
hand. His hair stood up straight, as it is seen in his 
pictures. General Walter Booth introduced him as the 
"Hero of New Orleans," which to a young listener 
sounded thrillingly fine as the crowd cheered in response. 

It might be noted here that at that time all the citi- 
zens of Meriden put together would not make much of 
a crowd. 

General Jackson looked grim and bored. He finally, 



28 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

aftei bowing- low, sat down and the carriag^e bore him 
away to the northward, President Martin Van Buren 
was once at the house. Tom Marshall of Kentucky 
stopped here once. He spoke in Meriden, and was a 
disappointment in that he had none of his accustomed 
wit and humor. He was intensely dry and serious. 
Henry Clay and Commodore Macdonough were also 
transient guests there. Abraham Lincoln and Horace 
Greeley have trod its threshold and looked across the 
valley below over to the unchanged mountains. 

An incident of the early twenties would in these days 
perhaps be called a " faith cure." Mrs. Bradley was in 
her brother's time the hostess. When only thirty years 
of age she was prostrated by paralysis. A traveler, a 
woman, was told, as an excuse for some omission in the 
service, that the mistress of the house was ill. She was 
much interested and very earnest to see the invalid. 

"My case was thought to be hopeless," said Mrs. 
Bradley, '* and I had lost all courage. The stranger 
sat down by my bed and told me she had suffered in the 
same way. She explained to me the method of her re- 
covery, and then she went on her own way. I never 
knew her naine, or whence she came, or whither she 
went, but she gave me hope and inspired me with reso- 
lution to get well. I have lived a long life since then, 
and I hope not quite a useless one." 

Mrs. Bradley lived eighty-five years with undimmed 
faculties. Perhaps in some fair country she has met 
the stranger whose words " fitly spoken " extended to 
and influenced another and younger generation. Mrs. 
Bradley is buried in the Broad Street Cemetery. A 
brown stone monument near the entrance marks the 
resting place of the Hough family. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE OLD SCHOOL DAYS. 

CO late as 1850 there stood on the slope between Gale 
*^ avenue and Holt Hill bridge a little, low red hut 
with four small windows. So the writer was told by- 
two old ladies who went to school there in their child- 
hood. This was the first school-house in Meriden. It 
stood at first near Ann street, but was moved. The 
old ladies were certain about it, for they both went to 
school there in the seventies and eighties. 

" It had a fireplace and the chimney was built out- 
side." 

Another one just as red and just as small wasbuilt a 
few years after on the "old road," now Colony street. 
Mrs. Jeanette Clark, the sister of the late George R. 
Curtis, went to school there more than eighty years 
ago. The second one had also a fireplace, for the alter- 
nate freezing and roasting process which the scholars 
underwent during the cold weather. 

"We learned our alphabet," said one of the aforesaid 
old ladies, and when we came Z we were taught to call 
it izzard." 

"What sense was there in that? " was asked. 

" I am sure I don't know," was the answer; "but so 
we were taught." 

On Saturdays the Shorter Catechism was studied, 
and, perhaps, sometime learned. Also, sometimes, 
the Commandments; but it appears these were con- 
sidered less important than the Catechism. The 
" Primer " for the younger children and the New Testa- 
ment for the elder were the school reading books in the 
seventies. 



30 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

The first edition of this primer was strictly religious 
in its axioms. Thus: " In Adam's fall we sinned all." 
The woodcut was of an apple tree, beneath which were 
two figures having a remote' likeness to humanity, one 
of them offering the other a big apple. 

" Young Obadias, 
David, Josias, 
All were pious." 

This was illustrated by three bare-legged boys in kilt 

shirts. 

" Zaccheus, he, 
Did climb a tree. 
His Lord to see." 

Zaccheus and his tree were not exactly in proportion 
to each other, but that, no doubt, was owing to limited 

space. 

" Proud Korah's troop 
Was swallowed up." 

' ' Time cuts down all. 
Both great and small." 

His scythe perilously near the heels of two fleeing 
boys of different sizes. 

' ' Youth forward slips. 
Death soonest nips." 

A youth in kilts and a skeleton were apparently hav- 
ing what in these degenerate and irreverent days could 
be called a "spirit." After awhile a more secular 
primer was published. The couplets in this new 
primer ran thus : 

" The cat doth play 
And, after, slay." 

" The dog doth bite 
The thief at night." 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 3 1 

This was intended as a burlesque on the original, but 
was not nearly as funny, and, needless to say, was not 
used as a school text book. 

By 1820 several school-houses had been built. A 
substantial one in the western part of the town was 
known as the Stone School-house. It is still standing, 
but for several years has been iised as a dwelling house. 
At this time (1825) there were well established board- 
ing schools in Hartford and New New Haven for young 
ladies. I believe the Lancasterian school for boys in 
New Haven was also then established. The Cheshire 
Academy was then of repute, and until in the forties 
this was a mixed school. Its single two-story brick 
school building was considered rather an imposing 
edifice. In many of the small towns in the state there 
were barn-like structures called academies. The chief 
distinction between these and the common school- 
houses was that the former weie two stories in height 
and the latter only one. Also, in the interior, the dif- 
ference consisted by having the seats arranged in rows 
with aisles between, each seat arranged for two scholars. 
Only the upper story was used by the school. The 
lower room, always a bare, comfortless place, was 
rented for itinerant preachings, or often for a winter 
singing school. 

"Why were the children compelled to go up stairs? " 

" I cannot tell; but so it was." 

As for the studies pursued at these academies, the 
feeblest of our modern graded schools would compare 
favorably with the best. It is quite possible that until 
the end of time each growing up generation will be told 
by the grown-ups how greatly superior are the advan- 
tages they have now enjoyed over those of their own 
unappreciative youth. One is sometimes half inclined 



32 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

to suspect that the advantages of the day and the hour 
are quite as many as the young students can manage 
with advantage. 

Long before 1833 the school districts in town had 
been set off and school-houses provided. These were 
so exactly alike, both outside and inside, that a sketch 
of any one of them would answer for any of the otherb. 
The dimensions were probably twenty by twenty-five 
feet ; certainly not more, and perhaps not as much as 
that. 

In 1832 the center of the town had grown so popu- 
lous that a quarrel ensued as to the location of the 
Center school. A compromise was made by a division 
into the north center and south center. The south cen- 
ter hired, or bought, a small workshop in a lane that is 
now the part of Charles street, between Broad and 
High streets; so close to the northwest corner of the 
Broad street cemetery that the side of the school-house 
formed part of the boundary. 

It is, however, with the north center school, in the 
winter of 1834, that the writer had the most intimate 
acquaintance. This was her first introduction to a dis- 
trict school, and also within her memory to a northern 
winter. The school-house stood nearly at the present 
junction of Wall and North Broad streets. A large 
butternut tree grew at the northwest corner of the 
building. Beneath this tree was the wood pile of logs 
to be cut for fuel as wanted. This was by no means as 
often as needed for warmth and comfort. Before the 
two doors, which gave entrance to the house, lay flat 
stones, which served as door steps. These might have 
been taken from the nearest stone wall. The open 
space around the house was bare of turf, and was worn 
into hollows. The paths which led directly to the doors 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. ^2 

were simply gutters filled with mud or dust, according 
to the weather. The doors gave access to two lobbies, 
where four or five children could stand at once if they 
stood close. The south door was the boys' entrance; 
the north door the girls. In the lobbies or entries, as 
we called them, were kept the outer garments, the din- 
ner pails and other possessions of the scholars. 

There was not a rubber shoe in America, or any- 
where else for that matter, and wet feet remained so 
until they had time to dry. In the middle of the room 
a raised hearth or platform, about three feet square, 
made of brick and the thickness of a brick in height, 
supported a box stove. The room had four windows, 
two on a side. Around the room on three sides was a 
sloping counter which served as a desk, on which was 
kept, in more or less orderly fashion, the books and 
slates of the larger scholars. In front of this counter, 
on three sides, was a bench made of slabs, the flat 
side being uppermost. These benches were an elon- 
gated and exaggerated counterpart of the wash-bench 
in common use before the era of city water and set 
tubs. In front of these were low seats, with an apology 
for a back. On these the younger scholars and the 
very little ones were seated, and wore out six hours out 
of every five or six days of their innocent lives. Oftener 
than not three dollars a week for a man teacher and 
one dollar and a half for a woman, for six days teaching, 
was thought " pretty easy." 

That they might give the district the worth of its 
money, they were required to teach the half of each 
Saturday, or the whole of each alternate one. The 
windows were shadeless ; neither blind nor curtain 
tempered the glare. They were never washed, unless 
in summer some young woman teacher, unable to stand 
3 



34 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

their grimness, essayed, with the help of the girls, a 
little housecleaning on her own account. The room 
was swept once a week by the girls in turn. The boys 
would have considered they had lost caste by doing 
anything so feminine. 

An acceptable candidate for the winter school must 
be able to teach reading, writing (for this last he must 
" set copies ") and DaboU's arithmetic, so far as or in- 
cluding the rule of three; to make a quill pen, and to 
"govern" the large boys. He would, no doubt, have 
been expected to make the fire, but as he "boarded 
round," it would often happen that his temporary resi- 
dence was a mile or two from the school-house, so the 
fire was built by some one living in the vicinity. 

At nine in the morning those who loitered outside 
were called in by a vigorous thumping on the window 
sash with a ruler or ferule. This instrument was util- 
ized as a timekeeper, to line copy books and as a means 
of castigation, whenever energetic disciplinary meas- 
ures were in order. The pupils rushed in with all the 
racket and clatter that vigorous youth, shod in heavy, 
cowhide boots and shoes, are capable of creating. The 
boys who entered later perpetrated a curious side long 
jerk of the head, and the girls a quick perpendicular dip 
of the person, both contortions being supposed to indi- 
cate " manners." When fairly seated Testaments were 
produced and school opened by the first and second 
classes reading two verses as it came the turn of each 
scholar. 

But, oh, such reading, such mumbling, stammering 
sounds ! Such nasal, twanging voices ! An ambitious 
youth would pitch his voice to a high falsetto that could 
be heard a quarter of a mile. The next one would be 
inaudible half across the room. It was positively 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 35 

dreadful to hear sacred words rattled off in such an un- 
meaning and irreverent fashion. 

The reading over, all the large scholars turned their 
faces to the wall and addressed themselves to Daboll's 
arithmetic, Woodbridge's geography or their home- 
made writing books. Of course, the boys could turn 
on the long benches easily enough, but the girls had to 
take pains to perform the gymnastic feat properly. It 
was done by stooping and placing the hands on each 
side of the skirts, then by a quick, circular movement 
throwing the feet over the bench. This was usually 
done simultaneously. When called upon for anything 
by the teacher the whole class whirled back again. 

At this juncture the teacher was exhilerated by the 
sight of a three-sided row of uncouth shoulders, rounded 
backs and swinging feet and ankles, for only the tallest 
pupils could touch, even while sitting, the floor with 
their feet. 

Webster's New Speller was the class book for spell- 
ing in the school. The revised edition of this spelling 
book, issued in 1880, differs from the edition used in 
the early thirties, and that differed somewhat from the 
first one issued. It was a thin volume bound in blue 
boards, and had a frontispiece depicting a very tall 
woman, who looked as though she had gotten out of bed 
on the wrong side and had draped herself with the 
blankets. She directed the attention of a scantily clad 
youth to an overgrown parrot cage labeled "Fame" 
perched on the apex of a boulder. There was no ap- 
parent reason in particular why she should not take it 
down and hand it to him. 

The third class having had their spelling lesson in 
words of two syllables set for them to study, the little 
ones were called up one by one to be taught their 



36 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

"A, B, C's." The unlucky infants were kept to their 
duty by raps on the head with the handle of a pen knife 
used as a pointer, and always kept in readiness for the 
exigencies of pen mending. The raps were never 
severe. They only emphasized such remarks as, '* Look 
on the book, not at me!" " Look sharp at this letter!" 
etc. A dozen or two of mere babies were thus tagged 
one another along down the row of twenty-six letters. 
Such requests as " Please to g' wout to get 'er drink er 
water! " (as though there were a choice of drinks), and 
" Please to mend my pen ! " The statement that "they 
are a crowdin' on me," and an occasional howl from 
some over-tired little mortal on the little bench in front, 
gave variety to the exercises. 

It would now be time for the second class to read and 
spell. A whirl of feet and petticoats landed two rows 
of boys and girls standing on the floor facing the teacher, 
who gave the order, "Manners!" and the jerking of 
necks and bobbing of skirts gave evidence that school 
etiquette was understood. The spelling came first 
afterward the reading from the same page. Here are 
a few specimens : 

' ' We burn oil in tin and glass lamps, " 

"We can burn fish oil in lamps." 

' ' Watts was a very good poet. He wrote good 
songs." 

A geography lesson, if anybody had one, mending 
pens, attending to "sums," and a "playtime" for the 
boys and one for the girls brought the morning session 
to a close. This "recess," as it was called by the older 
girls, was announced thus: " Boys may go out." This 
was a signal for a rush. The expiration of their time 
was notified by the rapping of the ruler on the window 
sash, accompanied by, " Girls may go out." 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 37 

This particular winter the boys would wait until the 
girls came out, and then intercept them and in various 
ways annoy them. The feminine spirit was aroused by 
this treatment, and the girls refused to stir until the 
obnoxious boys were safe in the school-house. The 
afternoon began by reading in the " Columbian Orator. " 
The "National Preceptor" came into use a few years 
later. To some of the scholars this was the best part 
of the day. More Daboll, a geography lesson and more 
alphabet for the little ones. 

Poor little things ! They sat patiently three hours on 
the hard benches, with nothing to do and nothing pleas- 
ant to look at. The one virtue required of them was to 
keep still. More spelling by the first and second 
classes, and at one o'clock, the school day's work was 
done. " Manners " were required from each scholar on 
leaving the room, and the genuflection was aimed at the 
wall, the benches, the door or the teacher as it hap- 
pened. The summer school was always taught by a 
woman. The routine differed something from that of 
the winter. Instead of "manners" she gave as the 
order " obeisance " as a more elegant word. The rule 
of three was considered too obstruse for the feminine 
intellect, and was therefore omitted. The summer 
school was depended on for the A, B, C teaching. Low 
be it spoken, but somehow the masculine powers did 
not seem -adequate to this preliminary lifting of the 
little feet upon the ladder of learning. 

The teacher of the summer school was also expected 
to teach plain sewing. She had to superintend the 
stitches put into certain squares of printed calico, which 
the housemother or a deputy had basted together. 
These were eventually made into bed quilts to be 
exhibited as the little maiden's own work, with an 



38 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN 

embroidery of facts not qiiite unheard of in the later 
days of floss silk and filoselle. The knitting of yarn 
stockings, also, had to be looked over and kept in order 
by the teacher. The vexations of lost knitting needles 
and dropped stitches, tangled yarn, soiled thread, puck- 
ered seams and long stitches were unremitting. 

In that bleak winter of 1834 two little maids met for 
the first time. Both were at odds with their surround- 
ings and each found the other sympathetic. The 
friendship begun then lasted for half a century unbro- 
ken by any misunderstanding or by one hasty or unkind 
word, until, with the once brown locks silvered, but 
with the smile of her girlhood upon her lips and in her 
eyes, one went away to abide forever in the country of 
eternal peace, for which she was so well prepared. 

In those early years the fitness of the teacher of the 
winter school was guaged by his capacity for what was 
called " government." This meant his ability to " mas- 
ter the big boys." There was no real discipline. It 
seemed to be a matter of brute force or, one should 
say, muscular efficiency. There were no rewards for 
good conduct, although punishments were common. I 
do not think the teacher of this particular school was 
especially cruel. He used the ferule severely and 
often. The writer remembers one boy who was made 
to stand in the center of the room and to touch the toe 
of his shoe with his forefinger, and to retain that posi- 
tion so long that he was ill in consequence. 

One little girl, for some misdemeanor, was ordered 
to go and sit next to a colored boy. As the culprit had 
just come from South Carolina and had seen more 
negroes than she had white people, she saw no humilia- 
tion in the order, and she could not understand why her 
indifference caused her further punishment. That 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 39 

winter some of the older boys rebelled at the teacher's 
severity, and by way of retaliation put live coals into 
the shoes he had left in the room at noon. He was, of 
course, very angry, but the guilty ones kept their secret 
well. With his best efforts he never found out who 
did it. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE FIRST PRIVATE SCHOOL. 

The first private school in town was taught by an 
Episcopal clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Keeler. The pri- 
vate school teachers who succeeded him, a Miss Booth, 
Miss Julianne Eddy and Miss Henrietta Malone, were 
his scholars. 

In the summer of 1834 Miss Eddy began a private 
school in the basement of the Center Congregational 
church. This room, now much enlarged, with lecture 
room, parlor, kitchen and all other necessary conveni- 
ences, was then one large, dark gloomy room filled with 
benches. 

Miss Eddy's scholars had their desks in the southeast 
corner, but they themselves sat about the room pretty 
much as they pleased. The windows, six in number, 
were high from the floor, and had deep seats formed 
by the thick walls. In these window seats the larger 
girls were fond of sitting to study their lessons. Their 
principal text books were "Watts on the Mind " and 
Comstock's " Dialogues " on Chemistry and Philosophy. 
The younger scholars were supposed to study Smith's 
Grammar and Olney's Geography. 

The author of the latter lived in Southington. He 
was said to be a very unpractical person. Having en- 
gaged some one to kill a pig, he was told to have every- 
thing in readiness very early in the morning. To be 
sure and be in season, he boiled the water for scalding 
his porkship over night. His geography, though, was 
an excellent one, and remained in general use for a 
great many years. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 41 

The only bit of geographical information that sur- 
vives is that of the animals of British America : ' ' Moose, 
Otters, Bears, Beavers, Martens, Foxes, Hares." 

We were not hurt by over study, and we had a good 
time. A small house now removed stood next west 
and close to the church. It was known as the Tibbals 
place. It stood several feet above the level of the 
road, and was surrounded by great clusters of the cin- 
namon and old fashioned cabbage roses, and was shaded 
by pear trees and the always present cherry trees. 
The front door was protected by an overhanging porch 
supported by pillars, having seats on each side. Here 
the daily recesses and the noon hour were always spent 
in good weather. Comfortably settled on the seats the 
older girls would send their satelites and generally 
obedient slaves, the younger girls, into the lane for 
green apples, following diligently the ripening of the 
fruit until the last pumpkin-sweet and fall pippin had 
fallen from the trees. 

This lane was lovely. On the east side of it a bank, 
surmounted by a board fence, separated it from the 
tavern garden with its abundant fruit trees. On the 
west a low stone wall ran close to a row of apple trees, 
from which we drew our supplies. These trees had 
been ingeniously grafted so as to be always fruitful. 
This lane gave access to the bare open fields, bounded 
on the north by Liberty street. The soil of these fields 
was considered to be so cold and wet as to be unfit for 
cultivation, and although almost every kind of wild 
flower grew there, and huckleberries, raspberries and 
blackberries were in profusion, we kept out of the 
fields, for there were traditions of snakes having been 
met with there, and reptiles of phenomenal size and 
venom. 



42 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGI AND TOWN. 

The lane could be entered from one side by a set of 
bars, but as a means of ingress these were ignored. 
Our usual method was to start from the house on a run 
and to go over the wall with a bound and a jump, 
returning with aprons and dress skirts ladened with 
apples. The dear woman who lived in the house used 
to lament and wonder and sigh and hope as she three 
times each day swept the debris from her front door- 
steps. 

But in spite of green apple eating and unlimited 
romping and racing, we remained a very health)^ happy 
set of children, even if our books did not trouble us 
very much. Once in a while we were all in earnest. 
' ' Comstock " mentioned the Camera Obscura. Straight- 
way experiments were in order. Shawls, capes, aprons 
and sun bonnets were pressed into service for darken- 
ing the windows. These were arranged to leave an 
aperture for the admission of tiny ray of light. Every- 
thing adjusted, the obsequious younger girls were sent 
out to promenade back and forth before the window. 
If the ray fell properly the moving figures would be 
seen upon the wall much diminished and in an inverted 
position. This experiment nearly outrivaled green 
apple devouring. 

One day Frances Holt, who was usually the instigator 
of our escapades, one or two others following a very 
close second, told us if we looked into the well "we 
could see stars in the daytime." This was sufficient. 
We at once hung ourselves over the well curb. Of 
course we saw no stars, but Mary Foster dropped her 
new fashioned, much beruffled, pink gingham sun- 
bonnet into the well and was only kept from going after 
it by the united strength of the company tugging at her 
skirts. The hubbub and screaming nearly threw the 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 43 

long-suffering inmate of the dwelling into a fit of nerv- 
ous prostration, though that was not the name for it then. 

The next winter the school was moved into a room 
more easily warmed in the basement of the old Baptist 
church on the northeast corner of the Broad street 
cemetery. Owing to the rise of the ground the most 
westerly of the two rooms was the higher. This was 
much smaller than the one used for conference and 
prayer meetings. The smaller of these rooms was the 
school-room. 

In course of the winter the older girls took a new 
departure and gave an entertainment with recitations 
and dialogues. There was no music of any kind. 
There was then only one piano in town, and although 
some of the girls had fine voices, not one of them could 
have been persuaded to sing in public out of a choir. 
The school-room was utilized as the dressing-room, and 
the stage was made by laying boards across some 
benches before the door, connecting it with the confer- 
ence room, that in this instance was the auditorium. 
The curtains were sheets with strings run in the hems. 

Miss Eddy managed the scene-shifting herself, step- 
ping daintily in her slippers, tied with cross ribbons, to 
the edge of the stage, drawing the curtain first from 
one side and then from tne other. The scene between 
Sir Peter and Lady Teazle was given with great eclat. 
The young lady who took the part of Sir Peter wore a 
coat and collar and stock borrowed from a young gentle- 
man. Such donning of manish garmenrs was thought 
to verge on impropriety, but on the whole it was much 
enjoyed. So very well was the affair received that the 
young men in the town at once started an ' ' Elocution 
Society, " in which all the prominent young men took 
an interest. 



44 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

After a year or two the elderly men became inter- 
ested and took part actively in the speaking and de- 
bating. The name was changed to the ' ' Debating 
Society," and soon after to the " Lyceum." The school 
remained in the basement of the church, as the location 
was a convenient one. The next summer it was further 
distinguished by lesson in theorem flower painting and 
also beadwork. Some specimens of both are still in 
existence. Calisthenics were also taught and practiced. 
This exercise Frances Holt confided to her especial 
affinities as " pious dancing." 

It was in this summer that half a dozen of the little 
girls had a play-place under a large and very beautiful 
tree that grew at just the present junction of Olive and 
High streets. Here they spent most of their noon 
hours in good weather. One day they found to their 
dismay they were "awful late." Passing in full view 
of those within the school-room, they alighted like a 
row of disconsolate pigeons on the lowest of the high 
flight of steps that led to the church door. Here they 
held a consultation. It would never do to go home at 
that hour that was certain, and they did not feel like 
playing any more just then. The position was very 
serious. 

Finally one of them, whose meaning was often better 
than her method of expressing it, said "she did not 
care for Miss Eddy; she was going in." As all the 
young sinners needed was a leader, the little troop filed 
into the schoolroom. 

No sooner were they fairly seated and Miss Eddy 
sternly regarding them, than one daughter of Adam, 
who, whether he was the first man or not, is the first 
tell-tale on record, took it upon herself to say that 
Frances B said "she did not care for Miss Eddy." 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 45 

" Did you say that? " demanded the lady. 

" Yes, ma'am; but I did not mean I did not care for 
you." 

"Take your place in that little chair in the center of 
the room. " 

Then Miss Esther Gray spoke and gave her opinion 

that Frances H deserved punishment quite as 

much as Frances B did, for had it not been for 

the latter not one of them would have been in school 
that afternoon. 

Miss Eddy considered for a moment and then sent 

Frances B to her seat. The two F s were 

" mad as fire " at each other for half an hour or so, and 
then "made up." Not long after this summer Miss 
Eddy married and went to live in one of the southern 
states. Except for a visit she never returned north. 

After Miss Eddy's marriage Miss Henrietta Malone 
opened a private school in what was known as Capt. 
Collins' "old house," in contradistinction to Capt. 
Collins' "new house." 

From first to last this was an ideal school. Most of 
the children sat in their own little chairs brought from 
home. A table held our extra book Upon rainy 
days it was drawn into the middle of the room and 
we sat around it while we ate our noon lunch. In 
one corner of the room was a " beaufet " cupboard, with 
curiously shaped shelves and paneled doors. 

In the other corner was a closet which held our out- 
door things. The fireplace and mantel were between 
the two. Two south windows and a north window 
gave the room plenty of light and sunshine. Lilacs 
and rose bushes clustered close to the door and windows, 
and apple, pear, plum and cherry trees grew all about 
the great old-fashioned house. The house itself has 



46 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

b^en gone for many a year, but Mr. Aaron L. Collins 
has an excellent sketch of it. Miss Malone was ex- 
tremely particular in her methods. 

When the grass was high on the wide lawn that 
fronted the house we were at our recess made to walk 
two by two down the path and to a certain distance 
outside the gate, and we came back in the same order. 
When the daily session was over we left the premises 
in the same way. When the mowing had been done 
and the grass we marched around the lawn, and our 
diversions were more varied, but were still sedate. 

Under Miss Malone's tutelage we were not injured by 
study. Indeed, one cannot remember we learned any- 
thing except to behave well and express ourselves 
properly. 

A small scholar, who is a grandfather now, an- 
nounced that " the sun has come out." 

" My dear," said Miss Malone, " the sun shines." 

The lad corrected himself a little. 

"Ah, that is better." 

A young gentleman, whose home was contiguous and 
found the daily parade very entertaining, one day var- 
ied the performance by saying, "How do you do?" 
every time the phalanx came aronnd. Finally one of 
the children replied : 

" None the better for seeing you." 

This being duly reported Miss Malone set before us 
all the extreme rudeness and incivility of such a reply, 
finishing the lecture by saying the answer should have 
been: 

"Very well, I thank you." 

At this Frances Holt, who always improved her op- 
portunities, put on an air of injured virtue and re- 
marked : 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 47 

'•Why, Miss Malone, suppose we wasn't well ; it would 
be telling a lie." 

Miss Malone's reproving "My dear" closed the 
subject. 

The marriage of Miss Malone to Henry Curtis closed 
this school. She became blind and bedridden before 
her death. One of her most tiresome old pupils, who 
had herself seen many vicissitudes, was glad to help a 
little to relieve the monotony of that darkened life. It 
gave one a curious sensation to hear again, after the 

long years, the once familiar, " F , you are reading 

too fast." The blind woman could not realize that her 
whilom provoking pupil was a gray haired grand- 
mother. 

Previous to 1835 all the children who did not belong 
to the " Old Road " district went to the stone school- 
house over west. There was no school-house between. 
In that year a district was set off at the Corner and a 
school was opened in a tiny building that had been used 
for some mechanical purposes, and stood just where the 
Main street railroad crossing now is. 

A part of the room, which could not have been more 
than twelve feet square, was taken up by a sort of oven 
or furnace of brick, which had been made for some 
experimental project. This room was used for two or 
three years. 

Meanwhile the Meriden Lyceum had grown, aided by 
such men as Judge James Brooks, Major E. A. Cowles, 
and Gen. Walter Booth, into an institution very credit- 
able to the town. In the year 1838 it was found that a 
suitable building was needed for its accommodation. A 
piece of ground was bought and a two-story structure 
was put up of only two rooms — one above and one 
below. The upper one was reached by outside stairs. 



48 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

and was for the exclusive use of the Lyceum. The 
Corner school was moved into the lower room. 

This was the beginning of the present Corner school 
with its several annexes. The school building on 
Church street stands on the site of the old " Lyceum." 



I 



CHAPTER IX. 

GEN. BENHAM's career. 

T has been said before that the eminence now called 
Buckwheat hill was for a great many years known 
as Burying- Ground hill ; but the first settlers called it 
Meeting House hill. So gradual is the slope that the 
altitude is not felt until the summit is reached. There 
is no higher land between it and Long Island sound. 

Young men and maidens, who are older now, have 
in a spirit of sentimental patriotism, climbed it at break 
of day upon the Fourth of July to plant a flag there at 
sunrise and sing "The Star Spangled Banner " as the 
folds floated out. Young men have " stood on the hill 
at midnight " and watched the moon rise against the 
shoulder of Mount Lamentation. 

At the foot of the hill, at the junction of Parker ave- 
nue and Ann street, there stands a large two-storied 
farm-house, built in the Meeting House hill era. Of 
the better class of New England farm-houses of those 
early days, it is one of the best specimens now to be 
seen. Any lover of old houses will be charmed with its 
paneled wainscoting and its unique cupboards, with 
arched paneling in the doors. 

A correspondence with a lady, whose forefathers 
were among the pioneer families and whose home was 
in Meriden until her marriage, has recalled a story 
which has to do with this dwelling. 

During the war of 1812 there came to Canada an 
Englishman with two daughters. After the war he 
returned to England leaving behind one of the girls, 

4 



5© RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

then about sixteen, to be educated. There alway 
seemed something strange about this. Soon after she 
married and was early left a widow with one son, who 
found a home with English or Scotch relatives, and 
never seems to have entered his mother's life or inter- 
ests afterwards. His name was never known here. To 
the New England young man of that period Canada 
seems to have been a brilliant land of promise, or a 
land of brilliant promise, which is not quite the same 
thing. 

Among others, a son of ' ' old Squire " Benham wended 
his way there, found the young widow and married 
her. He did not live long, and again she was left a 
widow with a little son. Her husband had left her 
with an impression that his relatives would care for her, 
and with her boy she started for the " States." 

After she had spent her small hoard she almost 
begged her way, but was helped by clergymen of her 
church as often as an opportunity presented. Living 
on crackers and tea principally, she finally reached 
Meriden, to find disappointment. She always said she 
was treated very badly, but she probably expected too 
much. She knew her hiisband's father bore the title of 
squire, and very likely had visions of an English esquire 
and his belongings. She found a New England farmer 
esquire of a very different type. 

Esquire Benham was known in the community as a 
man of affairs, and his counsel had weight in town 
meetings; but he kept his boots and stockings for Sun- 
days and public days, and in summer traversed his 
domain like an Arab Sheik minus the sandals. 

After a season of discomfort all round, when, as is 
usual, everybody and nobody was in fault, the young 
widow was packed off with her child to her relations in 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 5 1 

England. There she was coldly received. She was at 
best very plain in feature, and now, reddened by expo- 
sure and made more unlovely by her hard life, her 
English relatives declared themselves "disgusted by 
her coarseness," and she was sent off into the country 
" out of sight." 

Finally, they set her afloat again for America, and 
once more she came to Meriden and sought a home 
with her son's grandfather. Esquire Benham, This 
was early in the twenties. 

The house to which reference has been made was 
owned by a miserly widower named Liberty Perkins, 
who built the house and lived in it. 

A plan of getting rid of Mrs. Benham was suggested, 
and measures were taken to bring about its consumma- 
tion. He was represented to her as a man of property, 
as he was, for he owned large tracts of land in the 
southern part of the town. An unfenced lot, traversed 
now by the city line at South Broad street, was known 
for years as the Perkins lot, and nobody seemed to 
know exactly to whom it really belonged until the city 
lines were fixed, and the property was likely to be 
worth something, then the heirs were easily found. 

The marriage sped to a conclusion. Elderly people 
used to relate with glee how Liberty, during his brief 
wooing, resurrected an antediluvian old "gig" and, 
with his half starved steed, used to drive to Squire 
Benham 's on the old road (Colony street). 

Perkins wanted a housekeeper, and he thought he had 
managed to get a healthy woman with " faculty " and a 
servant for nothing. Mrs. Benham knew nothing of 
work of any kind, never having done any, and she 
thought it beneath her to even try to learn. She had 
but one thought in all the wortd, and that was her 



52 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN, 

darling son. He had been her companion in all her 
wanderings, which had been all for his sake. Her am- 
bition for him and her belief in his future never failed 
her. And now had begun for her a new series of 
troubles. She had married the dreadful old miser to 
give her boy a home and some advantages for an edu- 
cation, and Perkins would have none of him. He called 
the boy's studious habits laziness and his books nonsense. 

How the boy managed to get books to study was a 
marvel ; but he did get them, and hidden in his mother's 
garret, for she was a great deal of the time obliged to 
keep him concealed there, he actually prepared himself 
for Yale College and entered there. But hfs pride re- 
belled against the menial duties (he had undertaken to 
defray his expenses), and by push and generalship he 
somehow got from the Hon. Ralph I. Ingersoll an ap- 
pointment to West Point. 

This was the more remarkable, for at that time none 
but the sons of officers stood any chance at all, and 
Henry Benham had nothing but himself. From that 
time all things went on well with him. He graduated 
with honor and afterward held for some years a lucra- 
tive and honorable position at West Point. 

As soon as he was able he rescued his mother from 
her bondage and made her comfortable and happy 
thenceforward until the end of her life. Only two or 
three people now recall her as she chanted in season 
and out of season the praises of that worshiped son. 
Clad in a stiff, black silk and decked with a gold watch 
and chain, all of them his gifts, she would tell over and 
over again the story of her long and weary voyages and 
disappointments. She used to tell how from certain 
circumstances of his birth she "always knew he would 
be a holy child." 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 53 

Somehow her odd speeches that sounded so funny 
then have a pathetic echo now. Nothing could destroy 
her faith in her boy's future. She believed in his suc- 
cess with the prescience of second sight. This son, 
known as Gen. Henry Benham, was for many years 
commandant at the Charleston navy yard. He died at 
his country seat in a beautiful Vermont town. 

In front of, or rather on the south side of the old 
Benham house, known now as Higby place, at the foot 
of Ann street, there used to stand a large black walnut 
tree then, as now, rare in this region To guard the 
fruit of this tree from pillage by children and squirrels 
was the chief concern and occupation of the last years 
of Liberty Perkins' life. His grave is in the Broad 
street cemetery. 

The old house is rented to tenants who occupy it for 
awhile and depart, not knowing that the bleak attic 
once sheltered a brave, ambitious youth who fought his 
battle of life single-handed and won it. His mother 
could only give him shelter, and that secretly. Kind 
neighbors supplied him with the barest necessaries. 

There, in the cold and darkness, he prepared himself 
for and he ultimately gained one of the highest positions 
in the gift of his country. 



CHAPTER X. 

FACTS ABOUT THE BROWN FAMILY. 

A BOUT the year 1800 a farmer named Amasa 
"^^ Brown removed from a town on the other side of 
the Connecticut river into Meriden. He had been rich 
enough to make comfortable a family of thirteen chil- 
dren, among them two pairs of twin daughters, and to 
give them all the advantages of education that were to 
be had at that time. 

Just when this chronicle takes them up six of the 
children had died, among them the eldest twins, thir- 
teen years old. 

Just at this time, also, Mr. Brown had lost a great 
deal of his property through over-trustfulness in other 
people, and he found himself growing an old man and 
a poor one. An attachment between Jerusha Brown, 
the eldest daughter, an accomplished young woman, 
and a young man who belonged to a family prominent 
in the early annals of the state had been openly 
acknowledged He was well educated and moved in 
the best society, and the best society of that day was 
very good indeed. But he was idle, self-indulgent and 
purposeless. 

At that period, and for many years thereafter, through- 
out the central counties of the state the manufacture of 
tinware was an important business. A market for the 
finished articles was found by sending out " peddlers," 
who, with their well-stocked wagons, went all over New 
England and into the middle and southern states. 

The business was very profitable, and both the 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 55 

manufacturers and the peddlers accumulated what at 
that time was considered very handsome fortunes. 

The affairs of the Brown family were nearing a 
crisis, when Archibald Plumb, whose business as a ped- 
dler of tinware had taken him to the home of the 
family, proposed marriage to the eldest daughter. He 
promised if she would accept him to provide for her fa- 
ther and mother, and that he would also help her 
brothers find employment, which they had not hitherto 
done. 

Naturally the young woman hesitated, but she knew 
that young C , her first lover, had never even sup- 
ported himself, and very likely never would, and so for 
the sake of her old parents she married Mr, Plumb. 

He was as good as his word. He owned a house in 
Meriden, and to this he brought the family. As soon 
as possible he built another house, and in this he placed 
Mr. and Mrs. Brown and their children, and so began 
the family history of the Browns in Meriden. 

In this year of 1899 one house is still standing on 
Broad street in excellent repair. The older of the two 
has recently been torn down and a handsome dwelling 
house erected on the spot 

Mr. Plumb found business for the eldest son that took 
him to the Southern states, where for a time he seemed 
going on well, but he went wrong somehow and was 
executed as a criminal in New Orleans with a severity 
peculiar to the time and the locality. 

His fate was carefully concealed from his mother. A 
good many years after an inquisitive child began asking 
questions about him. Mrs. Plumb rose hastily and left 
the room. The unlucky little girl was impressively 
told never to mention his name again. 

The second son stayed at home and took care of his 



56 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

aged parents. He became engaged to a young woman 
belonging to a very respectable and very strict family. 
Nobody seems to have made any objection to the match 
until the time of the marriage was discussed, but then 
the parents of the young woman took the stand that 
before marrying their daughter he must join the church, 
the present Center church. 

This the young man refused to do, and the end of it 
was that he left town, and from the day of his depar- 
ture was never again heard from. The young woman 
married after some years had passed, and called her 
only son by the name of the man to whom she had been 
engaged so long before. 

Perhaps it may be well to give here the curious fact 
that her husband went away suddenly leaving her with 
a family of seven children, the youngest an infant, and 
was never again seen in Meriden, and his fate was never 
known. 

The younger twins had grown into a very lovely girl- 
hood, but they were delicate and drooped and died 
within a little while of each other as twins so often do. 
Of thirteen children only three were now left. 

Meanwhile Mrs. Plumb had become the mother of an 
only son. It was said from his infancy he showed a 
singular want of love for his parents or for people in 
general, his affection being given to horses to the exclu- 
sion of all other animals. 

At that time and for many years thereafter, usually 
in the spring of the year, long strings or packs of horses 
used to be driven from the north, following the turn- 
pike southward. These always halted at the tavern. 
If the droves were large, they were cared for by 
four or five men, two of whom followed in a team 
while the others walked. If they came into town 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 57 

at the close of the day they stayed at the tavern all 
night. 

William Plumb was always interested and excited by 
the arrival of these bands of horse traders, and had 
only just passed his twelfth birthday when he followed 
one of them out of town. 

When next his mother looked on his face he was 
fifty-two years old, gray, bald and seeming every bit as 
aged as herself. He had been gone thirty years when he 
first wrote to her. He said he had been all his life a 
stage driver in the West. He had been married three 
times to "good women," and had three daughters. 
One he had named after his mother. 

Some years after writing he came to Meriden, and 
the mother and son met for the first time in forty years. 
He stayed a day or two, and then they parted, and 
never saw each other again. 

Mr. Plumb, the man's father, had become a confirmed 
drunkard, had lost all his property but one house, then 
reformed and became a sincere and devout member of 
the Baptist church. He died long before his son had 
written home. 

There remains now nothing but the record of the 
lives of the two youngest children, Roderick and Ann 
Brown, and we must go back some years. 

From his first coming to Meriden, Mr. Brown, the 
father, had suffered from a painful, chronic disease, and 
soon after the disappearance of his grandson, William 
Plumb, it became evident that a crisis was imminent. 

He had always been fond of his family and ambitious 
for them. The failure of his hopes for them had near- 
ly broken his heart, but all was not done yet. One day 
the stage brought into town a well-dressed man of good 
manner and address. He brought with him, besides 



58 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

Other luggage, two large trunks, to which he seemed to 
attach an especial value. He took lodgings with the 
Browns, with whom he soon became intimate. 

He called himself Sherman, and said he was the 
owner of a large and valuable farm in the state of New 
York, and gave the name of a town where he said the 
farm was located. He also showed a plan of a house 
which he said he owned. This plan showed a library 
among other desirable features. 

He made furious love to Ann Brown, and so ingra- 
tiated himself with her father, that at last the latter de- 
clared that he could die happy if he could only see his 
daughter the wife of Sherman, and they were married 
at his bedside. 

Six weeks after the marriage Sherman left the house 
just as usual, and from that hour was never seen or 
heard of in this part of the country. The trunks so 
carefully guarded by him were opened, and contained a 
quantity of stones and nothing else. The place he pre- 
tended was his home was finally heard from. At that 
date men had not yet " put a girdle round the earth in 
forty minutes." No such person had ever been known 
there, neither was there in that vicinity any such house 
as he had described. 

Poor old Mr. Brown's heart was broken, and he 
gladly closed his tired eyes on a world where he had 
suffered so much. 

Ann did not take her husband's desertion very much 
to heart. A babe was born and died. She obtained a 
divorce from her pseudonymous spouse, and then she 
set up a home, with her mother as her housekeeper, and 
started the first and, for many years, the only millinery 
enterprise in the town. 

Roderick Brown, her brother, was an easy-going. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 59 

happy-go-lucky young fellow, with no vices, even if 
with no very pronounced virtues, and he had found 
something to do by which he was making an honest 
living. 

Of a sudden his friends were shocked to hear that he 
had been convicted, it was said, of horse stealing, and 
sentenced to state's prison, whither he went and served 
out his sentence. He finally returned home. Looking 
back one is inclined to think that Dr. Hough suspected 
the truth, for he stood by the young man and helped 
him in every possible way. 

After a while Roderick married into a most respect- 
able family in Litchfield county, and it really seemed 
as though he would be able to make his way. Every- 
thing bid fair for a successful future, when for no reason 
that then appeared he ran away. 

It was years and years ago ; but one person is living 
who was a child at the time, and has never forgotten 
the look of awful, hopeless despair on that young wife's 
face as she came suddenly into her presence two or 
three days after his disappearance. 

One week afterward she gave birth to a dead infant. 
For a long time she refused to see or be seen by any- 
body. All this time Ann, his sister, had led apparently 
a very jolly life. She had so many admirers, both 
married and single, that many people looked rather 
askance at her while she was so signally affable and 
good-natured, or, perhaps, one ought to say, good-tem- 
pered (not quite the same thing), that people could not 
help liking her in spite of their prejudices. 

Among those Ann Brown, one time Sherman, capti- 
vated was a cool-headed, thorough-going business man. 
When in town he was never long out of her presence. 
However, his absences from town would often extend 



6o RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

over a year or two, and then his natural caution seemed 
to help him to realize the risk he would run if he mar- 
ried her. Finally, after fifteen years of dallying, they 
were, it was said, married in New York. They took 
up their residence in a distant part of the country, and 
for some years Ann Brown and her works were nearly 
forgotten. 

Mrs. Plumb (her eldest sister Jerusha) had taken 
her mother back to live with her. Poor old Mrs. 
Brown had grown very crabbed and perverse, and 
seemed to take especial pains to talk of Ann's affection 
and kindness when with her. "Ann had left her 
mother wholly unprovided for," and Mrs. Brown more 
than insinuated that matters at the present were sadly 
different. 

Mrs. Plumb bore it all pleasantly, and only seemed to 
wish to make her mother's life as easy and comfortable 
as possible. 

One morning she went to her mother's room to assist 
her in rising as usual, and found her dying. There 
was only time for a hand clasp, a word of blessing, and 
then another long and weary life's journey ended in an 
unbroken rest. 

Twenty years passed by. Ann was dead. Rod- 
erick's wife had secured a divorce, had made a success 
of her own life, had a nice home, won by her own exer- 
tion. She refused to marry again. 

It naturally seemed now as though the troubles of the 
Browns were over and done with. One day she (Rod- 
erick's wife) was summoned to a neighbor's. Quickly 
entering the house she opened the door, and there stood 
the man who had left her so mysteriously almost a life- 
time before. A broken-down man, but she married 
him over again, took him to her own home, and 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 6l 

faithftilly cared for him until his death, two years later. 
After that she married again and went to another city, 
where she died. 

After the death of Mrs. Plumb, the truth came out 
about Roderick Brown. The sister, Ann Brown, was a 
forger. She had contrived that her brother should ap- 
pear the guilty party, and for her sake he bore the 
penalty and made no sign. But when he found that 
she had done the same thing the second time, flight 
seemed to him the lesser evil. 

If the real culprit felt any remorse for her crime, or 
any pity for those who suffered so cruelly from it, she 
never showed either. To the last day of her life she 
was gay and charming in her manner, and was veiy 
truly loved, even by those who had every reason to 
doubt her integrity. She was doubtless a creature of 
extraordinary personal magnetism. 

After her death it was found out that she had again 
forged the names of two of her nearest friends, and that 
discovery was certain. She died suddenly and very 
strangely, and her friends kept silence. 

Mrs. Plumb, her sister, lived to a great age, and was 
greatly beloved. The memory of her unfaultering 
faith and gentle patience has been a help and comfort 
to some upon whom the "chances and changes of this 
mortal life " have pressed heavily. 

Sometimes the "word in season " she has spoken has 
been passed along to cheer and help some other soul to 
whom the problem of living was growing a hopeless 

puzzle. 

Harriet and Caroline Brown, the twins, lie in the 
Broad Street Cemetery, but no one can now tell just 
where they are buried. Mr. and Mrs. Brown and Mr. 
and Mrs. Plumb have a monument in the East Cemetery. 



62 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

Ann is buried beside them, but her whole name 
will not be found there. It was carefully suppressed 
when the record of the graves was made. Her epitaph 
reads thus : 

" Ann" 
" She will never come to me, 
But I will go to her." 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE MANUFACTURE OF IVORY COMBS. 

T N the first quarter of the century all the methods of 
^ manufacturing were slow. Those of ivory comb 
making were extremely so, as the processes were pe- 
culiarly nice and delicate. The ivory tusks differed 
much in their fineness of grain. The finer grades 
were far less liable to warp or break. 

The manner of making a dressing comb was as fol- 
lows: An especially fine tusk having been selected, it 
was sawn into blocks of varied lengths, and these again 
into rectangular bars about half an inch in thickness. 

The next process rounded these, leaving on one side 
a narrow, flat surface, into which a row of tiny sockets 
were carefully drilled. The teeth, having been each 
sawn separately, were rounded and pointed by a deli- 
cate machine into shape and size to exactly fit the 
sockets, into which they were driven by a tiny ham- 
mer. Afterwards they were carefully drilled through 
the back, and teeth and brass pins inserted, smoothed 
and polished, making, when finished, a most luxurious 
hair-dressing implement that would last a life time. 

Sometime, it must have been 1830, or a little later, 
the Prattsville Co. began the making of wooden combs. 
A small reservoir or pond was constructed just about at 
the present crossing of Camp and Pratt streets. A very 
small building was put up closely adjacent. This ven- 
ture was abandoned after two or three years, and the 
pond emptied. The foundations remained there for a 
good many years. It was an excellent and favorite 



64 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

location for the propagation of snakes and red rasp- 
berries. 

Mr Pratt usually took the finished goods to either 
Hartford or New Haven in his own private conveyance, 
from whence they were shipped by boat. 

It was not until the late thirties that ivory dust was 
generally known to have any value as a fertilizer. 
Heretofore the refuse from the factories had been 
thrown away. When its virtues became known, prob- 
ably on the principle that one cannot have too much of 
a good thing, a favorite orchard of young trees was 
plentifully bestrewn with the substance, some of it wet 
from the saws, some of it dry from the finishing. 

Great was the dismay at the discovery that the grass 
in the orchard was rapidly turning brown, in fact was 
"burnt up." Bat the next year the grass and trees 
flourished luxuriantly, and the ivory waste soon became 
coveted and eagerly bought up by progressive farmers. 

About the year 1836, the Prattsville business having 
attained an importance which made a change necessary, 
the old building by the dam was abandoned and a larger 
building erected on the present location of Miller Bros. ' 
Cutlery. Many important improvements were intro- 
duced. Many of them by Mr. Fenner Bush. Some of 
them by Zina K. Murdock, who was a member of the 
firm, as was aljo Aaron Pratt, Ezra Pratt and Mr. 
Bush. Mr. Howard was dead, and the new firm was 
known as Julius Pratt & Co. 

Mr. Murdock invented and, aided by Mr. Bush, per- 
fected an arrangement for cutting the teeth of the 
combs, the exact reverse of the old method. The ex- 
quisitely fine saw remaining stationary while the ivory 
plate moved, stopping automatically when the length 
of the plate was reached. These improvements were 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 65 

not patented, but were carefully watched to prevent 
piracy. 

As the years went on other improved methods were 
adopted, until much of the manufacturing was done by 
delicately adjusted machinery that seemed really intelli- 
gent in operation. 

Most of those employed were young women, the 
daughters of persons in comfortable circumstances. At 
that time there were scarcely any avenues of profit open 
to women. The first young woman who took a posi- 
tion as clerk in a store in Meriden took that new depar- 
ture about 1840. She was excused for so daring a ven- 
ture on the ground that, after all, she was not so very 
young and had money invested in the stock. 

Mr. Pratt was inordinately proud of being able to say 
that within the space of a few years eight young women 
who had been in the employ of the firm married clergy- 
men, some of whom reached eminence in their profes- 
sion. Others became the wives of men who reached 
positions of influence and acquired wealth. 

Fenner Bush had been a member of the firm from 
the very first, and although his name did not appear, 
his opinions always had great weight. In character, 
Mr. Pratt and Mr. Bush were not inapt exponents of 
the fable of the wind and the sun. 

Mr. Pratt was quick in arriving at conclusions, and, 
having once got headed in any particular direction, was 
pretty apt to remain so; although if judiciously let 
alone his final decisions would be found conspicuously 
just and benevolent. 

Mr. Bush, like Mr. Pratt, had the "courage of his 
convictions," and was sufiiciently tenacious of his opin- 
ions when he had formed them, but was always patient 
and reasonable in listening to complaints, and gentle 

5 



66 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

and sympathetic, even if he could not redress Mr. 
Bush had more influence with Mr. Pratt than any other 
human being, notwithstanding or perhaps because of 
their opposite characteristics, mental and physical. 

They were associated in business and were close 
neighbors for a long lifetime, yet it is believed that in 
all that time no word or look other than kindly ever 
passed between them. 

Mr. Bush was an inventor, and therefore a thought- 
ful man, and he would sometimes become literally lost 
in thought. Mrs. Bush, "a perfect woman, nobly 
planned," was eminently a housekeeper, and, like a 
sensible woman, usually preferred to stay at home on 
Sunday, and see that everything was prepared for the 
comfort of her family to wearing herself out by walking 
the considerable distance to "meeting." 

On one of the rare exceptions to this, Mr. Bush, who 
had become absorbed in his thoughts, forgot her pres- 
ence and walked home without her. Naturally Mrs. 
Bush felt hurt, and said she thought that the impres- 
sion would be given that he did not care very much 
about her. 

"Now, really," said Mr. Bush, "I was thinking of 
you all the way home, and what a good dinner you 
would have ready for me." 

An experience of a quarter of a century of married 
life emboldens one to recommend the above speech as a 
text for the serious consideration of young matrons. In 
the words of the immortal Captain Cuttle : ' ' To over- 
haul your catechism, and, when found, make note on." 
Also, to add in the words of the above worthy's chief 
friend and counselor. Jack Bunsby : ' ' the bearings of 
this observation lays in the application on it. " 

Mr. Bush was fond of books, and he and Dr. Hough 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 67 

owned the only collections of books in town worthy to 
be called a library. 

It has been said before that Mr. Pratt was a man of 
much firmness of will. A certain Frederick Pearl had 
in some way wronged several Meriden people. How 
or why has always been a mystery. Children and 
young persons were then kept from the knowledge of 
many things that are now freely discussed. Mr. Pratt 
was among those who had suffered, and he had Pearl 
arrested and imprisoned in Canada. (Probably Canada 
was not then a "city of refuge.") There Mr. Pratt 
kept him at his own expense, and there he said he 
should stay until the last possible moment. But all 
things come to end sometime, and so at last Pearl was 
free. 

In the afternoon of the day before Thanksgiving, 
1846, Pearl was seen in Meriden, and that night the 
factory was burned to the ground, the alarm being 
given by the man who slept in the building. 

All that could be done to save the property was 
merely nothing, for the fire engine owned by the com- 
pany was always out of order. This engine was the 
only one in town. It was nearly as possible like a 
water cart, with a crank on each side worked by hand. 
After all was over, Mr. Pratt went home and told Mrs. 
Pratt that the factory was gone. 

An indication of the character of that most excellent 
woman and Christian can be discerned in her answer : 

"I hope Mr. Hall (the watchman) is safe." 

Mr. Pratt and Mr. Bush returned at once to the 
ruins. In the confusion the watchman hadjnot been 
thought of, and now he could not be found. 

The Rev. George W. Perkins, who was then pastor 
of the Center Congregational Church, who'Jhad seen 



68 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

disastrous fires in Montreal, where he had lived for 
some years before coming to Meriden, came to the 
scene and pointed out the charred remains as they lay 
near the bell among the smoking embers. 

Mr. Hall was a young man, and was to have been 
married in two weeks. The messenger who bore the 
sad tidings to the poor expectant bride never could re- 
member how he did it; but he said she stood looking 
steadily at him, and then, without a word, sank down 
in a heap on the floor. 

The remains of the unfortunate watchman were 
buried with impressive ceremonies in the old Broad 
Street Cemetery. 

From the date of the fire Frederick Pearl was never 
again heard of in Meriden. 

Arrangements were quickly made to rebuild of brick 
for the second time. Mr. Pratt remarked: " That for 
anything he could see brick burnt as easily as wood." 

Meanwhile Mr. Webb, who had by this time moved 
his business to Hanover, offered the use of his factory 
at night, and in a few days " Julius Pratt & Co." were 
doing a regular business between the hours of six in the 
evening and five in the morning, and continued so to 
do until the new building in Prattsville was completed. 

The making of piano keys was added to the comb 
business. The last days of the comb-making industry 
were approaching. For a number of years there had 
been an adverse element in the concern. (Not a Meri- 
den man, however.) 

A determination had been openly expressed that 
sooner or later affairs as they then stood should be 
broken up. Mr. Pratt and Mr. Bush were growing 
old, and desired peace and quiet. 

Aaron Pratt was dead, and Mr. Murdock had gone 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 69 

into another business. As is almost always the case, 
circumstances favored the aggressive party, and the 
whole business was finally moved to Deep River, where 
it is still carried on. 

A thriving business was thus lost to Meriden through 
the potency of envy, jealousy and spite — three disrepu- 
table factors that have accomplished more mischief in 
their low, mean line than their ravaging but more re- 
spectable compeers, " Plague, Pestilence and Famine." 



CHAPTER XII. 

DOOR LATCHES AND SLAVERY. 

TN 1 83 1 a blacksmith shop stood on the present site of 
^ the William Lewis block on West Main street. 
Just back of this was a small building in which was car- 
ried on the making of door latches. 

These latches were an improvement on those of ham- 
mered iron, in use one hundred years before. They 
were the joint invention of Homer Curtis and Harlowe 
Isbell, who entered into partnership and began the 
making of them in the above year. These latches met 
with a ready sale, and the business was succeeding, 
when it was found that an article just about the same 
was being placed upon the market. The innovating 
concern was in Maine. 

Being interviewed, the principals explained by say- 
ing " they were so far off they thought it would not 
make any difference." A compromise between the two 
firms was agreed upon, the Maine firm paying the 
Meriden firm a royalty for the use of their name. 

After a while Curtis & Isbell, finding an inferior 
article bearing their name upon the market, set them- 
selves to another inventive effort, and succeeded in 
evolving a rather cumbrous hybrid between a door 
knob and a door latch, in which the knob took the place 
of the thumb piece of the earlier article. These latches 
were blacked, and the varnish was hardened by baking 
in a kiln. As the only fuel was wood, and the desired 
result could not be obtained under a temperature less 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 7 1 

than three hundred, it will be readily seen that difficul- 
ties lay in the way, for while the varnish would flake o£E 
at a less heat, the handles, which were made of zinc 
and some other metals, would not infrequently melt 
at that point of calidity. 

To indicate when the proper heat was reached, a 
glass was inserted in the furnace door and a ther- 
mometer hung inside. This plan has been used in 
cooking stoves since then, and called a new invention. 

The business grew and met with difficulties, of 
course; but the company surmounted them. At last 
the business was moved, for more room, to the locality 
now more than covered by the spacious buildings of the 
Bradley & Hubbard Co. Here they prospered for 
some years until the concern came to grief from a cause 
which at first sight would seem to have nothing to do 
with the trouble. 

The subject of southern slavery was beginning to be 
discussed with a good deal of energy, and Mr. Curtis 
and Mr. Isbell held very radical views, and expressed 
them freely. 

Hitherto the slavery question had been treated almost 
exclusively on the ground of the injustice to the negro, 
and his sufferings under the sytem. From this point 
of view the anti-slavery party had been formed. 

Mr. Curtis and Mr. Isbell were then the only persons 
who voted the anti-slavery ticket in Meriden. The im- 
mediate result to them was that their factory was set 
on fire and burned down with all the contents. The 
firm rebuilt and started again, with a good prospect 
for success, when their factory was again destroyed 
in the same way and for the same reason as before. 

It may seem incredible that a sin of political opinion 
should have been visited so vindictively upon two 



72 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

comparatively obscure men. But the anarchist spirit is 
the same always— born of self-interest in the leaders 
and ignorance in the followers. 

Also, it should be remembered, that although there 
was very little foreign element anywhere in New Eng- 
land and none at all in Meriden, yet newspapers were 
not accessible except to the few, and books were scarce. 
Besides, it was honestly believed, even by those who 
identified themselves with the obnoxious party, that to 
anger the South meant poverty and ruin to the North. 

However, the political aspect changed, and the anti- 
slavery party became the Free Soil party, and many 
were added to it. 

Looking backward down the vista of the years at the 
seeming fatuity of this political movement, a new 
meaning is given to the words: " Despise not the day 
of small things; " for whether it likes it or not, the Re- 
publican party of 1899 must acknowledge itself the off- 
spring of the party that in the first third of the century 
had but two adherents in Meriden and but seven thou- 
sand in the whole United States. 

But to return to the door latches. 

The later invention had never met with much favor, 
and was not profitable enough to go on alone, so the 
firm added the making of iron toys — tiny spades, 
shovels, rakes, little kettles and flat-irons. A foundry 
was built, of which the chimney is still standing, and 
for the third time the firm seemed on the road to 
prosperity. 

Soon after this Mr. Isbell left town, and the latches 
were superseded by another invention, which has been 
perfected into the present door fastening methods. 
Matters were progressing very well, when for the third 
time the latch works were maliciously set on fire, this 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 73 

time the offence being Mr. Curtis' radical views on the 
temperance question. 

Just at this time another cause hastened the final re- 
moval of this particular business, and at the same time 
crippled half the other business enterprises in the 
town. There are still persons living who remember 
when a building, now lost somewhere in the depths of 
F. J. Wheeler's hardware store at West Main street, 
stood on the present site of the Meriden House. It was 
a country store, owned by Major Elisha Allan 
Cowles. 

To this store came as a clerk about the year 1836 a 
boy who afterwards proved to be one of the strangest 
characters Meriden has ever known. He was full of 
business, and to all appearances given up to the inter- 
ests of his employer. 

At that time church membership was reinforced by 
religious awakenings or revivals. At these seasons 
ordinary work was neglected, and nearly the whole 
community gave their time to protracted meetings and 
sacred topics. 

One would not seem to speak irreverently, but the 
exercises and the sermons were, and were meant to be, 
terrifying, and sensitive persons often suffered extreme 
mental agony. Afterward, finding relief from this 
state, they joined the churches they preferred. 

In one of these revivals Curtis Lemuel North, the 
young clerk, professed himself very deeply moved, and 
perhaps with some sincerity, for he always seemed to 
keep his religious principles and his business practice 
entirely distinct from each other. 

From that time he secured a very strong hold on the 
confidence of Major Cowles and Mrs. Cowles, so that 
his influence caused the dismissal and disgrace of an 



74 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

innocent fellow clerk, whose widowed mother died 
shortly after in consequence. 

Curtis retained the confidence of Major Cowles and 
his wife through any amount of evil report. He had 
always some plausible excuse ready, or even a direct 
falsehood if things looked too shady. At last Major 
Cowles died, and Curtis was, of course, deeply grieved 
and profoundly sympathetic. So much was he moved 
that he offered to go to Hartford and procure a coffin. 
A suitable one could not at that time be procured in 
Meriden. 

He went, first of all, to the insurance office in which 
Major Cowles had held some position. By his repre- 
sentations he secured the vacant place. He purchased 
the coffin and came back home, having done a fine stroke 
of business in more ways than one. 

He lost no time in insuring (all by himself) the life of 
Dr. Isaac I, Hough, who, knowing himself to have 
organic heart disease, had never tried to insure his life. 
Two or three years after this Dr. Hough was found 
dead on the floor of his room. Curtis managed thus to 
secure three thousand dollars. 

From this time he began a career that was, finally, 
nearly or quite the financial ruin of everybody who 
came in contact with him, and that meant anybody he 
heard of who had any income, large or small. 

The really strange thing was that although some 
doubted him when out of his presence, they were pliant 
to his will when in contact with him. He built the 
house now owned by Edmund A. Parker, corner of 
Washington and Colony streets, set up a carriage and 
pair of horses, and after a flourish of a year or two 
failed, carrying with him half the population of the 
town. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 75 

To this day it is a mystery how he managed so much 
rascality and escaped. He cheated his benefactress, 
Mrs. Cowles, out of more than half her property. He 
ruined Walter Webb's ivory comb business in Hanover. 
Mr. Webb had loaned him a few hundred, and to his 
horror found himself liable for one hundred and ten 
thousand dollars, all he was worth and rather more. 

Homer Curtis loaned him three hundred dollars and 
found himself ruined. Men found themselves in debt for 
sums of eight and ten or more thousands, who had no idea 
of such a predicament. To the question, "Why in all 
the world did not somebody put Curtis North in prison 
then and there ? " the answer was made, " Because no- 
body could put their finger on anything he did in any 
way that would convict him." He had always made a 
catspaw of somebody else. He literally "stole the 
livery of Heaven to serve the devil in, "for all this time 
he never failed, wherever he might be, if he got a 
chance, to organize a Sunday school or conduct a prayer 
meeting. 

"Judgment- and justice are not of this world; "for 
this man, a known liar and forger, after leaving Meri- 
den became the husband of a wealthy woman, and 
preached what no doubt, in spite of Curtis North and 
all his kind, is the gospel. 

His first wife, a most estimable woman, is buried in 
the West Cemetery, 

The hardware business conducted by Homer Curtis 
was ruined. Mr. Curtis was urged to take certain 
steps which would have secured himself but would have 
injured others. He said his "own integrity was more 
precious to him than all else. This remained to him, 
and not for any fancied gain would he part with it." 

When Kansas became a Free Soil state, Mr. Isbell 



76 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

emigrated thither. His character was too sanguine 
and visionary to make him a successful man anywhere, 
and his family endured many hardships. Mrs, Isbell 
visited Meriden afterward and received many gifts. 
Feeling, as was natural, grieved by the change in her 
circumstances, she said, with tears : 

*' Once I also had something to give away." 

Mrs. Julius Pratt's answer to this was the perfection 
of Christian grace : 

" You must consider we are all sisters." 

There is now, in 1899, one old house on Curtis street 
that still has affixed to its doors the latches made by 
Curtis & Isbell. 

Some of Mr. Curtis' family are still living here and 
sit on good men's seats. 

Of all the men who have come and gone in this 
"transitory life" of three-quarters of a century, not 
one has seemed so thoroughly what was said of another 
than Homer Curtis — ' ' An Israelite, indeed, in whom 
was no guile." 

Mr. Curtis, perhaps, was too unworldly to be what 
the world calls a successful man ; but no child of his 
need blush for or wish to have concealed anything he 
ever did or said. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

SUNDAY MORNING IN THE EARLY THIRTIES. 

jVTOTHING could be more quiet and idyllic than a 
^ ^ June Sunday morning in the early thirties. No 
sound of labor was heard, either within or without the 
dwellings. 

The atmosphere was so clear that the tall, weather- 
beaten hemlock that for many years stood out from the 
steep face of West Peak could be distinctly seen out- 
lined against the sky. 

No smoke of coal and no odor of gas was in the air, 
for coal was not then known in Meriden except by 
hearsay. The thin vapor which rose high from the 
chimneys was from the burning logs of oak, maple and 
hickory. The housewives were very knowing in those 
matters, and they would accept no other than ' ' hard 
wood," for they must have coals in the fire-place and a 
log to cover with ashes in order to "keep fire." 

The nine o'clock church bell was rung Sunday morn- 
ing by one of the " Butler boys," or by "Uncle John " 
Butler himself. The tall clock in the corner of the 
Butler " keeping room " kept the standard time for the 
town. Every night the clock was wound by Uncle John. 
The exercise was one of importance. The narrow door 
in the case was opened and carefully laid back, dis- 
closing the great pendulum suspended by a long wire. 
The loaded end of one and then of the other of the long 
cords which carried the great square weights were 
drawn out their full length, the winder stepping back- 
wards as he drew. 



78 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGT AND TOWN. 

The church bell was also rung at nine o'clock e very- 
night through the week. This bell tells the same hour 
now (1899) from the same old tower. In those days the 
sound traveled far, for there were no tall towers to 
break its resonance. Upon Sunday morning its ringing 
was the signal for active preparation for " Church " 
and " Meeting." It then was thought most indecorous 
to be late at public worship. 

From the "Farms," from the "Plains," from 
" Webbsville," from " Prattsville," from '' Clarksville, " 
and from the outlying farms everybody was expected to 
go except those who were ill or were too young. 

The old people rode but the younger walked, taking 
their time, for they must start early enough to be in 
season. The horses took on a decorous, leisurely Sun- 
day amble, but the dogs knew perfectly well that they 
were expected to stay at home on Sunday. 

Everywhere in New England the Sunday services 
were held both morning and afternoon. In the winter 
there was an interval of an hour at noon. In the sum- 
mer it was an hour and a half. The heads of families 
brought capacious lunch baskets, a reticule sufficing 
for those who had only themselves to think of. 

The elders passed the "nooning" in visiting from 
pew to pew, interchanging such news and views as was 
supposed not inconsistent with the day and place. If a 
point was stretched in this regard, why, they were 
human. The Sunday school occupied the younger 
people. The books of the Sunday school libraries 
seemed to have been compiled to demonstrate how 
much unreadable and totally uninteresting matter could 
be put into print, and selected to show how many of 
such books could be got together. 

The Sunday school library of St. Andrew's was one 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 79 

shining oasis in this desert of no ideas. It had a few of 
Miss Edgeworth's books, nearly all Mrs. Sherwood's, 
and two or three of Mrs. Cameron's (Mrs. Sherwood's 
sister). These books were finally read all to pieces. 

In the warm weather any who lived in the vicinity of 
the three churches expected their friends and relatives 
to call at noon. They were regaled with viands espe- 
cially prepared for such hospitality. 

The Sunday attire of the captains, the majors, the 
colonels and the squires, of whom there were plenty, 
with now and then a judge and the deacons, varied 
little from year to year. If the waist measure lessened, 
the increased comfort compensated for the slouchiness 
of the garment's fit. 

If the girth so increased that neither the housewife's 
needle or the tailor's art were adequate, a new garment 
was constructed as nearly like the old one as it could be 
made. 

The Sunday dress of the women had more variety. 
The " bleaching box " would sometimes take fire, and 
the ten or fifteen years' old straw bonnet would suffer 
from the accident, and thus a change became a neces- 
sity. Even then the remains of the old material would 
be so incorporated with the new that the novelty was 
not distracting. 

One old lady, very old at the time, Mrs. Mindwell 
Merriam, always adhered to the costume of her youth, 
probably about 1750. Her Sunday dress in the sum- 
mer never varied in style or material. It was of some 
dark blue stuff, pongee silk probably, and was very 
short and straight in the skirt, showing her low shoes 
tied with black ribbons. The waist was like a short 
sack. The sleeves came only to the elbow, and were 
finished there by wide ruffles of black lace, which fell 



8o RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

over the tops of her long, black silk mitts. The short 
cloak of thick black satin was trimmed with wide black 
lace, and the curious black satin bonnet, something like 
but not quite a hat, had also a fall of lace around the 
brim. 

That lace would make a collector break one of the 
commandments, and be tempted to break another. 

There was in those days a great deal more sec- 
tarian exclusiveness and stand-offishness than there is 
now. With a certain air of dignity and self-respect, 
elderly people carried also an aspect of severity and re- 
pression that repelled the younger people and kept 
them out of touch and sympathy with their elders. 
Vivacity was not deemed becoming, and merriment 
was almost a sin. 

Doubtless the theology of the period influenced the 
most of them. They were fairly beaten down by the 
teaching of most of the sectarian publications, and by 
the pulpit teaching of the certainty that a dreadful 
doom must befall them, and those most dear to them, 
unless they were sure of their "evidences." These 
" evidences " were often more evident to those persons 
most sure of them than they were to others. 

Prayer, sermon and exhortation all turned on the 
justice and wrath of the Creator. Very little was 
taught of His praise, almost nothing of His love. It 
was held as a discredit to the Episcopalians that they 
were a more cheerful set. In numbers they were far 
in a minority, otherwise they compared favorably with 
the other denominations. 

It was not possible to hear the grand " Gloria in Ex- 
celsis," the uplifting " Te Deum," the splendid " Tris- 
agion," and to repeat over and over again "Our 
Father," and not be susceptive of some of their spirit, 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 8l 

and thus to look up to the Deity in another light than 
as an awful avenger. 

This religious, gloomy severity and sadness are now 
almost wholly of the past. Only the Episcopalians 
talked of going to "Church," the others went to 
" Meeting." 

A little girl who had spent most of her short life at 
the South was asked if she had been to church or meet- 
ing. Sorely puzzled by the question, she said she 
"didn't know." 

In the Congregational church, in the seat nearest the 
door, always sat every Sunday a negro, by name Jake 
Freeman. Rain or shine, he was always in his place. 
He was the only colored voter in town. He owned a 
small property "over East." Next him his wife sat 
with rolling eyes that took in everything all over 
the place. In the corner of the seat sat, very 
upright, Chloe Deming. She was Jake Freeman's 
sister. 

" Black Chloe " was a very tall woman, and large in 
proportion. She was very black, and very proud of her 
complexion. Chloe was also proud of her bonnet. 
Regarded as a bonnet, this structure was simply colos- 
sal, crown and front vying in altitude. 

A heavily worked black lace veil was tied around the 
crown, and always worn drawn exactly lengthwise, 
leaving just half of her expansive face exposed to sight. 
Arrayed in this headgear, Chloe comported herself as 
one who had achieved that crowning glory desired of 
woman — a perfect bonnet. 

Chloe was also aristocratic. She washed and cleaned 
house for none but "real good folks." She also re- 
proved and instructed in "manners" the younger 
members of the family she worked for, much to her 
6 



82 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

own edification. The temptation to give Chloe's recipe 
for soup cannot be resisted. 

Chloe stood at the washtub, with one hand on the 
rubbing board and the other upholding a dripping gar- 
ment, her eyes brimming over with tears that ran down 
her cheeks as she told her sympathetic listener the 
story of the illness of her son, who had just died of 
consumption. 

" Willyum dident have no appetite," said Chloe. 
" Nothing dident taste good, so I took 'er piece of pork 
— it was fustrate pork. Miss Collins she gin it to me, 
and it was fustrate. And I biled it jes' nuff ter bile it, 
not nuff ter make it soft, and I thickened the broth 
with injun meal, and I cut up some inyun tops inter 
it, and Willyum said it was good." 

And Chloe finished with an emphatic slap of the wet 
garment on the board in her satisfaction at the rec- 
ollection. 

" Willyum " had been the trial of her life; but if he 
had been the best son that ever lived she could not 
have grieved for him more. Maybe she would not 
have grieved so much. 

Upon this particular Sabbath morning which we are 
recalling, the Rev. Mr. Perkins, at the Congregational 
church, had just got into the swing of the long prayer, 
in which he never failed to irritate some of his hearers 
by his allusions to slavery. 

At the Baptist church Rev. Harvey Miller was read- 
ing the Scriptures with most original comments of his 
own thereon. 

At St. Andrew's the litany was being devoutly 
responded to, and except these low sounds the quiet 
was absolute. 

Suddenly there broke into the repose a clamor and 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 83 

din of sound that caused the very clergymen to jump in 
their shoes. 

William Merriam's bees had swarmed, incited, doubt- 
less, by the unwonted stillness. The unorthodox in- 
sects could only, it is supposed, be kept from going 
hopelessly astray by confusing whatever answered to 
mind in their entomological make-up. 

Therefore it was that those who for the last day or 
two had been watching their movements, upon this 
Sunday morning found it expedient to sally forth with 
poker and tongs, iron spoons and tin pans and kettle 
covers; even an old brass warming-pan, with clashing 
lid, adding a kettle drum accompaniment to the racket. 

Up and down the before-quiet street rushed the riot- 
ous vigilance house committee, doing their best to keep 
up with the gyrations of the whirling mass above their 
heads. 

In the churches stern and rather resentful parents 
watched, with anxious eyes, their wriggling and all but 
giggling offspring, until, finally, the bees were secured, 
and once more the stillness returned. 

And now the morning had passed, and the noon in- 
tervals also, and in all the churches the afternoon ser- 
vices drew to a close. No one would for his reputation 
own it, but everybody is glad when they rise for the 
closing hymn. 

At the Congregational church, John Porter, with his 
magnificent voice and his violin, had led the singing. 
At the Baptist church, Joel Miller had led. At St. 
Andrew's, Edwin Curtis; and he invited the choir to 
meet at the church at five o'clock. 

This is joyful news, for it really meant a sacred 
concert at that hour. So the people drop in and sit 
where they like and listen to the flutes and violins 



84 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

and to the singers as they rehearse anthems and chants. 
The sun was sinking behind the mountain as the 
choir sang, softly and sweetly, the hymn: 

" Fading, still fading, the last beam is shining." 

The music went on as the sun went down ; and now 
it is done, and this Sunday has drifted into the inevitable 
past. The past of long ago. 

If it be true that no sound is utterly lost, then some- 
where in the vast phonograph of the spheres the splen- 
did melody of John Porter's voice, the sweet contralto 
of dove-eyed Sarah Ives, the harmonies of the flutes 
and viols, still survive with other tones and other J 

voices heard and lost m the procession of the years. ' 

And we who, in the rush of the busy street or in the 
quiet of home at nightfall or at break of day, are 
haunted by the tone — 

" Of a voice from this world gone," 

shall hear again the lost chords. Sometime, but not 
now; somewhere, but not here. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 85 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE MILITIA AND "TRAINING DAY." 

OOMETIME in the late thirties the Meriden militia 
*^ were in a badly disorganized condition. Military- 
rank was by no means undervalued, however. The 
titles of Gen. Booth, Colonel Seymour, Major Cowles 
and Capt. Collins dated from the war of 1812, and were 
as much a part of their personality as were their sur- 
names. 

Except for the military rank then acquired, and also 
for certain blue and scarlet uniforms, kept more care- 
fully than people keep anything in these days of new 
processes and shoddy goods, the war of 1812 left very 
little trace. 

The youthful Goddess of Liberty had sent Dame 
Britannia home, and told her to stay there until she 
could come back pleasant. And the old lady, wise in 
her generation, profited by past experience and did go. 
After that matters got themselves adjusted, and possibly 
a long continued peace made military tactics seem 
unnecessary. 

The law required that the citizens should do what 
was called military duty, but the citizens did not see 
the sense of leaving necessary work to dawdle about 
and lose one day in the spring and another in the fall, in 
the busiest season of the year. Besides, their uniforms 
were worn out or outgrown, and they had lost their 
popular captain, Evelyn Beckley, and they were 
heartily tired of the whole thing. 



86 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

It was at this crisis that a very excellent but rather f 

unpopular man secured the captaincy of the town ^ 

militia, with more eagerness and alacrity than was 
considered strictly becoming. 

"Training day" had come, and on the short green 
turf, just about where the street car track crosses Charles 
street, stood an uneven line of men clothed in every 
absurdity of costume that their ingenuity could invent. 
One had attired himself Vv4th all his visible raiment, even 
to an old straw hat inside out. Another genius was bril- 
liant with strips of tin fastened thickly on coat and 
trousers, and another wore a most wonderful creation of 
bed ticking. Turkish trousers made of curtain calico, 
with patterns far enough away from the artistic prints of 
later times, were much affected. These were worn 
with every sort of coat, military or not, upon which the 
wearers could lay hands. The guns were as varied as 4 

the costumes. ;[ 

One excessively humorous person shouldered a 
broom, but he was promptly snubbed. The line had to M 

be drawn somewhere. Some men would have dis- ^ 

missed the company on the spot. Captain resolved 

that they should march around the " quarter." 

This was to go from the present intersection of Broad 
street and East Main by the most direct route to the 
junction of Griswold and North Colony streets, thence 
down Colony street to West Main, and thence again to 
the point of departure. The distance was called three 
miles. .'. 

Upon Britannia street, just west of Broad, there -^ 

stood at that time a very large, wide-spreading and pe- j.^ 

culiarly low-growing apple tree, the lower limbs resting | 

upon the low stone wall beneath. 'J^ 

Having with infinite travail of soul conducted his re- :, 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 87 

calcitrant command to this point, the helpless and dis- 
mayed captain beheld his front rank deliberately march 
up the stone wall into the tree and seat themselves on 
the sturdy branches. He ordered them down, and they 
laughed at him. The unhappy man lost his head alto- 
gether, and directed the men, who, either better be- 
haved, or maybe because there was no room for them in 
the tree, had stayed in the road, to fire upon the oc- 
cupants of the apple tree. 

Probably there was not a spoonful of powder or a gun 
that would go off, unless backward, among the lot of 
them. The only result of this order was that the rested 
and refreshed delinquents in the tree pointed their 
guns at their grinning comrades in the road. 

At the period we are recalling, a dwelling-house, a 
small shop where brass combs were manufactured for 
the southern market, and a country store stood between 
Piatt avenue and Foster street. 

A properly stocked country store was expected then 
to have among its commodities certain fluids which no 
sagacious person mentions in the hearing of a pro- 
hibitionist. This particular store was noted for the 
excellence and potency of its New England distil- 
lations. 

Down what is now the smooth, well-graded Colony 

street, but was then the " Old Road," where the spear- 
mint grew up to the wheel tracks and the sweet flag 
thrust its green spikes into the footpath, as far as the 
aforementioned emporium, did the bothered captain, 
with much weariness of spirit, contrive to march his 
company, but when arrived there, whether he liked it 
or not, his mutinous "train-band " halted. 

Some poet or philosopher has remarked that in our 
misfit lives smiles and tears alternate with surprising 



88 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

celerity and promptitude. From the sequence of events 
it is likely that in this instance over-much "smiling'' 
prevailed. 

A dispute between one of the fatigued warriors and 
a citizen not long returned from South Carolina finally 
culminated in a fistici^ff duel that reached a crisis in an 
adjoining barnyard. The victorious citizen was subse- 
quently dubbed " General Pickens " because it was al- 
leged he fought the battle of the "Cowpens." This 
was not exactly historically correct, but his waggish 
young half brothers helped to perpetuate it, for they 
never called him anything else behind his back. 

Captain never got his whole company back to 

the center of the town. Some of them would not go 
farther, and more of them could not. A great deal of 
ill feeling ensued, and the captain's poor old horse was 
maltreated to an extent that left him at the mercy of 
the flies all summer. 

A law suit was talked of, but nothing came of it. 
There was only one lawyer in town then, and some- 
thing ailed his throat. Soon after this an " Independ- 
ent Company " was formed, with Lyman Butler as 
captain. They were known as the Meriden Grays. 

Edwin Yale Bull and Henry Peck Judd were the 
fifers, John Miles and Timothy White drummers. 
Their uniform was of gray cloth, with sole leather 
steeple top caps with feathers. "General training" 
days were events of great importance, or at least then 
were considered such. Edwin Yale Bull recollected 
going to Waterbury, Milford and New Haven with the 
company. 

Capt. Butler resigned after a year or two of service. 
His health failed, and he died of consumption at the 
early age of thirty-six. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 89 

After Capt. Butler's resignation, Almeron Miles, a 
man of remarkably fine presence, became the captain, 
and retained that position until "forty-nine," when he 
and many of his company went to California. 

For a long time thereafter little attention was paid to 
military matters. But in 186,1 a nation of soldiers was 
born in a day. From our cities went out husbands and 
lovers, brothers and sons, some of them to look never 
again with mortal eyes upon the faces of those who 
"wept sore" for their going away. And some came 
back to realize how in their absence "Had grown in 
Paradise their store." 

As time lapses into the inevitable past, we reap the 
benefit of such times of trial. In the present admirable 
drill and discipline of the military, and the other two 
organizations which have the peace of the city and the 
protection of property as their especial charge, can be 
seen the resultant fact — that by voluntary submission 
to absolute authority men learn that there is such a 
thing as intelligent obedience. 



90 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 



CHAPTER XV. 

BUTTON MAKING THE " OREGON" ROAD. 

" When Adam delved and Eve span, 
' y' ' i Where was then the gentleman ? " 

A ND of course the gentlewoman. She is not mentioned, 
-**■ because "she "does not rhyme. To this sapient 
couplet with an interrogation point one answers that 
where our misguided forbears were thus laudably em- 
ployed, the gentleman and lady were precisely where 
they are now — that is, in the individual. 

The matter of work or labor has nothing at all 
to do with the question of good manners and good 
breeding, which is what is really meant, or with posi- 
tion, either, which is another thing and brings its own 
obligations. 

In the couplet quoted there seems to lurk an insinua- 
tion that labor is inconsistent with dignified good man- 
ners. But dignity is not haughtiness. Dignity is a 
true sense of honor, a hatred of meanness, a high sense 
of personal worth and a consideration for others, and a 
fine perception of propriety so constant and unvarying 
that it has become second nature. 

It happened once that some persons out for a drive 
found near the Meriden almshouse a number of the 
male inmates employed upon the road repairs eating 
their plentiful but coarse noon lunch. 

An impulsive young girl in the party stopped the 
carriage, and, taking a basket of fruit, handed the con- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 9I 

tents to the men, who took the apples greedily but in 
silence, until, one of them, a foreigner, rising, took off 
his hat and, in a few well-chosen words, thanked her 
in his own behalf and others. 

He had the demeanor of a well-bred man, and evi- 
dently. Heaven help him, the feelings of one too. 

By this time it is likely that somebody has recalled the 
remark made by somebody else to the effect that it is 
not possible for a woman to go straight at any subject 
she is intending to discuss. 

"But one hears so many words made about the "dig- 
nity of labor," and they seem so unnecessary, for the 
reason that good breeding and honorable work faith- 
fully done make any man or woman a dignified lady or 
gentleman. And, besides, these desultory thoughts 
were called up by the memory of the men and women 
who were active in the early life of Meriden, 

Sometime in the first fifteen years of the century Dr. 
Isaac I. Hough amused himself by collecting facts and 
data relative to the early history of the town. He gave 
up the enterprise, because he said he was about twelve 
years too late. The Rev. G. W. Perkins used these 
notes in compiling a pamphlet history of Meriden, but 
he omitted many things that seemed to him uninterest- 
ing, and gave no credit for what he used. Dr. Hough's 
notes, unfortunately, were not preserved. 

Mrs. Bradley, who has been quoted so often, said her 
mother, Mrs. Hough, raised silkworms and made and 
spun silk — of course, woven by hand— and found it profit- 
able. A piece of silk spun and woven at that time was in 
the possession of a member of the family for a good many 
years, when it was unfortunately destroyed, with, at 
the same time, part of a set of bed curtains once used 
upon what was called a tent— or tester— bed. These 



92 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

curtains were of heavy home-made linen, embroidered 
with home-spun linen thread. The pattern was con- 
ventional, of tulip flower design. The colors used 
were red, yellow, blue and a few threads of black. 
These colors were of home-made dyes. The stitch 
used was the same as the Kensington stitch of to-day. 
Although more than one hundred years old when de- 
stroyed, the fabric was good, the colors bright, and 
the work was very little worn, except in the less heavy 
parts. Beautiful fine linen thread was spun and woven 
by the housekeepers of 1800. 

Doubtless there are many specimens of this work 
still in existence, and valued more highly than when 
they were less rare. 

Button making was one of Meriden's first manufac- 
tures. Dr. C. H. S. Davis says in 1794; and doubtless 
he is right. These first buttons were made of pewter. 
Very early in 1800 it must have been that Amos Curtis 
began the making of coat buttons. The eyes of these 
were made by hand, Mr. Curtis being his own me- 
chanic. The material of which the buttons were made 
was " a mixture of lead and tin, or zinc, and antimony, 
boiled together in a great iron kettle. " " The cooking " 
of this alloyage was superintended by Mr. Curtis in the 
basement kitchen of his own house, which stood a few 
feet south of Broad street. J^; 

Mr. William Curtis, the son of Amos, told the writer \ 

that his part of the business was to separate the cooled 
buttons from the molds into which the hot metal had 
been poured, he being five years old at the time. 

Mr. Curtis also said that his father used to set him a 
"stent," to be done at noon between school hours. 
Furthermore, Mr. Curtis said that of the only two 
whippings of his boyhood, one was inflicted for throwing 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 93 

some of his unfinished work under the bench, thus 
making it appear that he had done more than he had 
really accomplished. 

Perhaps it may not be out of the way to say just here 
that the second and last castigation was for letting his 
sister drive the cattle home instead of doing it himself, 
as he had been told to do. 

One wonders what would be the effect of such train- 
ing on the five-year-olds of this decade. That or some- 
thing else made a successful man of William Curtis. 
His bodily vigor was remarkable. He was seen at the 
age of seventy-six to ascend a tall ladder, and, what is 
quite as much to the purpose, to get down again with- 
out difSculty. 

All the work of making the buttons was done by 
Amos Curtis and his children in his own house. Ped- 
dlers took them, as they did most kinds of merchandise, 
all over the country. 

One individual who owed Mr. Curtis a moderate sum 
paid him with a tract of two hundred acres of land in 
the vicinity of the present city of Cleveland. Mr. Cur- 
tis was not satisfied with this payment, as he consid- 
ered it only a little better than nothing, and at an op- 
portunity disposed of it. From a creditor nearer home 
he received a yoke of cattle in payment of a debt. 

When Mr. William Curtis was about seventy years 
old he unearthed from his garden the same knife-shaped 
tool with which, when five years old, he used to re- 
move the molded buttons from their constructive frame. 
Mr. Curtis valued the article as a relic very highly. 

In September, 1892, the Meriden Journal staXeA. that 
something was to be — or not to be — done to the ' ' Bone- 
ville " bridge, a lonely nook at the southern part of this 
town where it would seem that no manufacturing 



94 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

interest could ever have had a place, and yet for more 
than thirty years it was noisy with the whir of machin- 
ery, and busy with the events of birth, life and death. 

As most of the circumstances of living are the out- 
come of beginnings that have apparently nothing in 
common with final results, so it was here. 

In the early twenties, the most direct road from 
Meriden to Cheshire lay over the steep hill directly 
west of Hanover village, or South Meriden. After the 
long ascent was gained, an abrupt descent led by a cir- 
cuitous route through the hamlet called Hough's Mills, 
and from thence, after crossing the river twice, to 
Cheshire street. 

It must have been about 1828 that a movement was 
made to open a new and more direct route between the 
towns. This road was to pass northward of the Quinni- 
piac, and it would give more direct access to the farms 
lying upon that side of the river. 

For some reason forgotten now, but thought potent 
enough at the time, the project was opposed with a good 
deal of cross-grained maliciousness by the farmers of 
the vicinity. The most influential man among them 
effectually put" a stop to the plan by investing his 
money in a factory and dwelling house upon the only 
available space between the high bluff on one side and 
the river on the other. 

The spot was a beautifully romantic one then, but the 
old bridge which led to it was torn down and the course ^ 

of the highway changed long ago, and it is impossible ' 

to give in words, and idle to attempt to convey, any 
idea of it. 

The making of wooden pocket combs was the first 
business venture there, but the making of bone buttons 
soon took its place, hence the name of "Boneville." 



i 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 95 

That given in joke has clung to the locality more or less 
ever since. 

For a number of years button making was a prosper- 
ous business, employing many young women, who 
were boarded either in Mr. Griswold's, the proprietor's 
own family, or at a private house near by. 

The prospect of a new road to Cheshire street, which 
should go around the hill instead of over it, had not 
been forgotten, and about the year 1847 what is known 
as the " Oregon " road was begun. 

The name of Oregon was first given by Luther Webb 
and William Rice, so wild and then almost inaccessible 
was the region. The boys had been exploring, as boys 
love to do, and being questioned as to where they had 
been, replied that they had "been to Oregon." After- 
ward the name was taken up by the workmen employed 
there by the Meriden Cutlery Company on a reservoir 
and dam since abandoned. It became a local title in 
common use, 

A business man from Greenfield, Mass. , who inquired 
for Mr. J. C. Breckenridge, looked thunderstruck when 
told by the heedless interlocutor that Mr. Breckenridge 
had ' ' gone to Oregon. " Of course an explanation speed- 
ily followed. 

The rocky cliff on the south side of the river descended 
steeply and directly to the river side, and to make room 
for the new roadway a good deal of blasting was neces- 
sary. A large stone thrown across the ravine crashed 
through a window of the button factory and instantly 
killed a young woman who sat there engaged in her 
usual work. After this misfortune others followed. 

The situation of the dwelling house, set as it was 
against the face of the cliff, was as unhygienic as 
it possibly could have been, if that had been the object 



g6 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

in putting it there, and illness and death were frequent 
in the family of those residing there ; this house being 
rented by the proprietor of the factory. Finally, the 
death of his wife seemed to destroy his ambition, and 
his failure in business put an end to the button industry, 
so far as one knows, in Meriden. 

Various unsuccessful attempts were afterwards made 
to establish some kind of hardware business there, the 
last one by a Mr. Osgood. 

In i860 the factory was burned down. Not long 
after that sundry improvements by the cutlery company 
covered the foundations with water, and finally oblit- 
erated every trace of them, and the building of the 
Meriden & Waterbury Railroad, that passes over the 
spot, took up most of the rocky face of the cliff. 

Once lovers met there; marriage vows had been 
pledged there; fair babies were taken into loving arms; 
and there a young mother was taken from her little 
children, and left her husband to a grief that never was 
comforted in this world. And save for this record, not 
a trace is left of it all. 



f 



I 



CHAPTER XVI. 

BROAD street; ITS ORCHARDS AND FLOWERS. 

•yHE often quoted Mrs. Sally Bradley, whose mind 
•* and memory were unimpaired at the time of her 
death at a great age, is my authority for any memories 
anterior to 1834. One has a misgiving that this is a 
repetition, but age is garrulous. 

Mrs. Bradley told the writer that the ravine south of 
Charles Parker's residence. Broad street, was, in her 
young days — that is to say, in 1789, perhaps — called 
Nabb's Folly, because somebody of the name had 
tried and failed to make a road across it. 

Now — in 1899 — this ravine is upon the east side 
quite filled up, on the west side nearly so. 

The permanent filling up of the uncommonly deep 
chasm, through which ran a rapid, never-failing but 
narrow stream of water, was supposed to be as nearly 
impassable as was the making of a solid way over or 
through the treacherous, quaking green morass called at 
that time the "Old Fly," but since known disastrously 
as the "Peat Works," for when the New Haven & 
Hartford Railroad corporation surveyed for their nar- 
row one-track road, it was said that the " Old Fly " was 
a bottomless quagmire that could never be filled in or 
made safe, no matter what was done there. 

However, the turnpike people filled up the ravine 
sufficiently to make a narrow road across it, and, on the 
whole, a safe one, although for a great many years 
heavy rains and snows would cause ominous crevices 
where the causeway met the steep slopes at the sides of 
the " Gulf," as it was locally termed. 

7 



98 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGfAND TOWN, 

In 1833 the street was, as it is now, pretty straight, 
but its width was a very uncertain quantity, and its 
level of a varied " up and downedness. " 

For instance, the now beautifully graded grounds 
upon North Broad street, between Camp and Pratt 
streets, were then alternately a high, steep, caved-in 
bank overhanging the road, topped by a dilapidated 
Virginia rail fence, which was kept from going alto- 
gether to pieces by the attraction of cohesion probably, ^ 
and at the head of Camp street was a deep defile in 
which grew several large butternut trees. The nuts 
from these trees used to lie upon the ground ungathered 
all through the winter, so plentiful were they. 

Sometimes, indeed, a frugally-minded youth gathered 
them, and the equally plentiful walnuts and chestnuts, 
and sold them in the only markets at Hartford or 
New Haven, borrowing, or oftener than not hiring, his 
father's horse and wagon to convey them there. He 
would sell them for a price varying from twenty-five to 
fifty cents a bushel, calling himself most successful if 
the latter price was received. 

The interspace between Camp street and the " Gulf," 
now built up with handsome residences, was a thick 
wood of great hickory, chestnut and oak trees, with a 
dense undergrowth of low-growing trees and bushes, in 
which was black birch of piquant flavor, not often 
sought for, as black snakes and adders hirked there. 

It does not seem so very long ago that a flat-headed 
adder was seen apparently asleep on the south side of 
the gulf. South of this point, the road on the west 
side, for a good many rods, was fenced by a low stone 
wall, its ruggedness softened by a hedge of tall even- 
ing primroses, such as one verily believes never grew 
anywhere else. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 99 

Do any children now know the fun of watching the 
perfected primrose buds open at the touch of a finger. 
To be sure, one must go far afield to find the primroses. 

The ground now covered by the sidewalk and green- 
sward between the Congregational Church and Charles 
street was the dumping ground for huge piles of tin 
chips, which accumulated rapidly with the conscientious 
methods of manufacture then used. The heaps of glit- 
tering refuse were embedded in an exceedingly luxu- 
riant growth of wild parsley, known to the children as 
" poison fennel." 

The green (it really was one in those days) in front of 
the churches was a parade ground for a flock of geese, 
reinforced not infrequently by a pig or two or a few 
stray cows. Their presence never seemed to worry 
anybody. Likely as not they were the property of 
some town official. 

But on the first Wednesday in May and the three suc- 
ceeding days, the green was enlivened in a different 
manner. Upon those days did the apprentices at the 
various tinware shops, whose prerogative it was to 
have a half-week holiday at "election" time, with 
everybody else that felt like it, seriously and with great 
decorum play ball. There is no doubt they enjoyed it 
mightily, but they made it appear a very solemn function. 

Just at the crossing of East Main and Broad streets 
stood a tall post, from which hung a large, square sign. 
On one side was depicted a rather robust and florid 
young woman altogether too thinly clad. She pointed, 
with an amiable expression, to a miraculous cornucopia 
of about a peck basket capacity, from which issued a 
bushel or two of incongruous fruits and vegetables. 
This was supposed to represent Pomona, the goddess of 



lOO RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

The poor thing swung there until time and the wear 
and tear of the seasons obliterated her bloom; the 
cornucopia was only a blotch of yellow paint, and of its 
multifarious contents no trace remained. The iron 
watering trough stands upon the spot over which for so 
many years the. old tavern sign hung. 

One cannot be quite certain, but it was probably in 
the summer of 1835 that a circus was allowed to exhibit 
in Meriden. Very grave and severe were the criticisms 
upon the reckless conduct of the selectmen in allowing 
anything so wicked and demoralizing. Usually a circus 
passed through the town in the night, leaving no trace 
but the tracks of the solitary elephant — never more 
than one — in the dew)^ road. The children thought it 
very exciting to find the tracks in the road. In this 
case, the circus being permitted to stop, a tent about as 
large as a good-sized rooin wa3 pitched close to the sign 
post. 

Well-brought-up children, particularly little girls, 
were hardly permitted to look upon the outside of the 
canvas. Under certain restrictions we might feast our 
eyes upon the sight of one scrawny camel and the de- 
spondent elephant that were the processional features of 
the show, they being natural history, and therefore in- 
structive. 

Some time in this summer Mrs. Samuel Lester gave 
a party for her little sister at Broad street, in the house 
occupied for many years by the Rev. Harvey Miller of 
fragrant memory. A dozen little girls, most of them 
in pink or white cambric dresses, white stockings and 
slippers, crossed over the instep by narrow black rib- 
bons tied around the ankle, and pantalets reaching to 
the heels of their slippers, all of them with bare necks 
and arms, were at the house by two in the afternoon. 



^■< 



\ 



' 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. lOI 

The leading feature of the festivity was the waiting 
for the advent of the New York stage. All in a row 
and "taking hold of hands," at the proper moment the 
young revelers dropped a simultaneous curtsy. 

The very evident appreciation of the occupants of the 
vehicle was highly gratifying. One may as well add 
that the "boys" came about six o'clock, and all went 
home at eight. Observe that this was in the summer 
time. 

Broad street is beautiful for situation, and destined to 
become more beautiful in the coming years. But in the 
springs and summers of those bygone years it was beau- 
tiful exceedingly. The gigantic cherry trees which en- 
vironed and overtopped every house, also planted in 
rows by the roadside, were tall pyramids of snowy 
bloom. 

Every house had a small orchard of choice apple trees. 
Peach trees were common, and plum trees were abun- 
dant. Purple and white lilacs and white roses, the old- 
fashioned sort, single and fragrant, were in every door- 
yard. A white lilac with twisted stem can be seen now 
on the north side of Edmund Wilcox's, Broad street, 
which was set there by Mrs. Sally Bradley in 1836. 
Others on Broad street have stood for sixty years. 

One cannot forbear recalling two or three lovely 
gardens of the olden time. One of them, at the head 
of Broad street, was surrounded by a low terrace or off- 
set, veiled and curtained by the soft green of pot-moss. 
Fragrant yellow lilies grew there. The heavy-headed 
crimson peonies, the tall spikes of purple foxgloves, 
the blue Canterbury bells, clumps of low growing Scotch 
roses, which were tiny red roses an inch in diameter, 
set closely on stems a foot high. The Scotch roses and 
pot-moss went out together. Nobody sees either now. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 



And the other garden, with plats of the rosy flush of 
May pinks and great mounds of spicy June pinks and 
rows of tall white lilies. And still another one farther 
down the street, with roses and lilies and beds of thyme, 
and summer savory and sweet clover and beebalm. 
These gardens are not. No fragrance of herb or rose 
or lily lingers. Long ago the hands that tended them 
laid down "their busy work for evermore." And the 
kindly eyes that watched them are closed here to open 
upon the lilies of paradise years ago as we reckon time, 
but for them it may be ' ' the wonder is not yet gone out 
of their eyes. " 



n 



CHAPTER XVII. 

SOME OLD HOUSES AND BRIDGES. 

TT is only an echo of a very far away time, but the 
frequently quoted old lady was often heard to say, 
that "when she was a girl, all south of what is now 
East Main street was thick woods and pasture fields." 
The woods were so thick that when the cows were 
turned in there one of them always wore a bell. 

" In the summer the milking was done at the bars." 

These bars were just west of the Center Congrega- 
tional church, almost exactly opposite the head of 
Center street. Mrs. Bradley also said that the hillside 
north of East Main street, from Broad street down to 
Pratt street, was heavily wooded with "great trees of 
the first growth, with a good many white wood (tulip) 
trees among them. They used to look very handsome 
when they were all in blossom," as may very well be 
imagined. 

In 1835 a little girl was sitting on the front " stoop " 
of one of the four dwelling houses — the only four on 
the south side of East Main street. This was then a 
steep road that fell in nearly perpendicular patches, 
alternated with short, abrupt dips or hollows that held 
water, and were reservoirs of mud even when the rest 
of the road was perfectly dry. This little girl pro- 
pounded the question if ' ' anybody supposed there 
would ever be any streets over there?" 

"Over there" meant the area between East Main 
street and Britannia street, Colony street and Broad 
street (known then as the "Turnpike,") the "Old 



I04 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

Road " and the "road down to the Corner," all com- 
prised "over there." 

The misprophetic answer was: "It is possible, my 
dear, but not very probable." 

Yet the respondent lived long enough to see at least 
half a dozen streets opened and more or less built up. 
There were, in 1834, only five houses on the north side 
of East Main street. In the first of these there lived 
and died a gentle young widow, who faced the world 
bravely in behalf of her little son and four baby daugh- 
ters. This house has been moved a little north of the 
original site and is in good repair. 

The next was the Mecorney house, and stands in its 
old place. It is No. 194 East Main street. The third 
was removed to make room for the Town Hall and 
Norwood street. " This was the Captain Cowles place," 
now No. 25 Twiss street. Here was another old- 
fashioned garden — a delight to the eyes of two little 
maidens, who used to gaze laughingly through the 
fence and make every excuse their small brains could 
invent to get inside. 

Four or five splendid old maples were destroyed 
when the house was removed. An ancient house called 
the " Cornelius Hull place " was moved to make a site 
for St. Andrew's Church. 

Another row of fine maple trees were sacrificed at 
that time. This house, one of the oldest in the city is 
now (1899) in excellent repair as No. 69 Miller 
street. It will scarcely be credited, but it is true, that 
so steep was the descent of the road from the junction 
of Catlin and Liberty streets, that a child standing at 
that point could not see the roof of a tiny house that 
stood where No. 104 East Main street now stands. 
This house was the birthplace and for many years the 






RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. I05 

home of Edward Lawrence, an eccentric imbecile, 
whose presence used to be a familiar one in the city, 
but whose poor scatter-brain has been quiet in the 
grave for many years. This house is also still standing 
in fairly good repair not far from its original site. 

From a point near Willow street a road diverged, 
leading over a knoll into South Colony street. The 
apex of this knoll was just at the point where the Main 
Street Baptist church now stands. The ground de- 
scended sharply from the roadside into a bog, consid- 
ered so hopeless that an amputated limb was buried 
there, the spot being thought not likely ever to be dis- 
turbed. When this limb was, many years after, disin- 
terred, it was for a while thought very mysterious and, 
perhaps, tragical. 

The building of the Meriden Bank, the Meriden 
Daily Journal^ the Meriden Republican, the City Mis- 
sion and other adjacent buildings stand where once was 
this marsh. Veteran and Crown streets also traverse 
it. East Main street, from Pratt street to Hanover 
street, was a narrow highway through a quagmire, 
guarded on each side by pollard willows, which were 
cut every year. Nobody ever even tried to walk on 
the south side of the narrow roadway, and there was 
not enough for a footpath on the north side. 

The hapless pedestrian who made a misstep could only 
flounder about in a morass composed of about equal 
parts of black, sticky mud and water, tin chips, sweet 
flag and alder bushes. Harbor Brook ran across the 
road. It was bright, clear, rippling and pure, too, as 
any country stream need be. 

No country road can show a bridge so tumble-down 
and unsightly as was the one that spanned the stream 
on the only thoroughfare between "uptown" and 
" downtown." 



lo6 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

The other bridge over Colony street, a few rods 
south of it was its twin. In the spring, when the frost 
was coming out of the ground, the road for some dis- 
tance at the east end of the bridge, and for a little way 
at the west end, was well nigh impassable. 

In the spring of 1836 a little girl standing at the win- 
dow of a dwelling house, where Palace block now is, 
saw a Yale student drive rather precipitately ofE the 
west end of the bridge with his father's horse and 
wagon. It should be noted that a carriage, as we now 
understand the term, was not then to be thought of. He 
had successfully piloted his way through the slough. He 
may have thought all danger over, for he drove rapidly 
and with an air over the bridge, only to find himself 
sitting very upright in the stationary vehicle, with 
reins in his hands and the mud up to the wheel hubs, 
while the liberated steed, with the rest of the harness 
trailing at his heels, was laboriously plucking his mud- 
begrimed legs step by step from the sticky bog, nor 
paused until he had gained the short, steep ascent 
where the streets crossed. The mud was deepest just 
where the railroad track is now. 

One recalls, also, a certain day when the surveyors 
were engaged in the preliminary work of the railroad. 
Rubber boots were in the future, and Mr. Brodhead, 
the surveyor, who was just a least bit of a dandy in his 
dress, always wore what was not as common then as 
now, very conspicuous linen wristbands. On this par- 
ticular morning he stood, with the wide cufEs on his 
wrists and enormous leather boots on his legs, shouting 
orders to his assistants. Evidently he was very cross, 
for not getting an answer to a question he, with divers 
unquotable expletives, desired to know if the "fellow 
was deaf." 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. I07 

The offender, who had been absorbed in executing sun- 
dry gymnastic performances, at last yelled something 
in response, in which naughty words and "snake " bore a 
part, at the same time lifting a long, squirming black 
snake and throwing it to a distance. Not beyond the 
swamp, though, for to have done that he must have 
thrown it beyond Pratt street. 

The often-quoted dear old lady was also at divers 
times interviewed as to the legend of the Regicides 
and their hiding under the bridge at Harbor Brook, 
while their pursuers were passing over it on horseback. 
Her answers never differed very much from this for- 
mula: 

" It seems to be the fashion not to believe it, but it 
might have been true easily enough, for it was all a 
swamp, and the trees and alder bushes grew so close to 
the bridge and all around it ; and when I was a girl we 
all believed it. Everybody did." 

Speaking of the Regicides, one is reminded of the 
story that, while the fugitives were hiding in the Judge's 
Cave, rather mythically located upon East Rock in New 
Haven, it was said a lady in white used to be seen daily, 
very early in the morning, descending the declivity, 
always in white, and at a certain point finding a basket 
of (it is to be hoped) comfortable things waiting for her. 

This continued to be done for the space of two years, 
if one may believe the legend. How the mysterious 
female contrived to live in a cave and dress in white 
gowns is a problem which the modern daughters of Eve 
would be extremely pleased to have solved for them. 

But, of course, all that has nothing to do with East 
Main street in Meriden, 

Very singular it is that while the men of each genera- 
tion are so diverse in their characteristics, the small 



Io8 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

boy remains the same in all generations. We remem- 
ber that King David when a boy was severely snubbed 
and sat down upon by his big brother (who. of course, 
knew how it was himself) for presumably running after 
the soldiers. To be sure it was not at all as the big 
brother supposed or, at least, pretended to think, and 
the outcome of the affair, it is recorded, was extremely 
creditable to the embryo potentate. The moral of 
which is that if the small boy will mind his father and 
make good use of his hands, he will be apt to make a 
very good hit and strike a big thing sooner or later, 
one way or another. 

This leads up to the statement that the boys of the 
last century were very like the boys of the present 
one 

The writer remembers her uncle, Dr. Isaac I. Hough, 
and Capt. Lyman Collins, the father of Aaron Lyman 
"Collins and Charles Hinsdale Collins, as two portly 
elderly gentlemen of leisure. It was reported that they 
were oilce seen to occupy between them seven chairs. 
The two old gentlemen were nearly of an age. Their 
homes, in the center of the town, were near each other. 
They were from early boyhood intimate fiiends, and 
their graves, in the Broad street cemetery, are only a 
few feet apart. 

Somewhere about 1797 General George Washington, 
making a journey through New England, spent with 
his attending gentlemen one night at a tavern in Wal- 
lingford, where they were " made very comfortable." 
" In the morning they rode up the Old Colony road." 
They must have passed the old " Dugway " cut in the 
steep side of a hill long since leveled, and on up South 
Colony street. 

The distinguished company must have crossed the 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. IO9 

bridge at the junction of South Colony and Hanover 
streets, and then passed up Colony street. 

For the ancient lady so often quoted told the writer 
that when Dr. Hough and Capt. Collins were boys, per- 
haps ten or twelve years old, they ran all the way from 
the Center to the Corner and saw, with their own eager, 
boyish eyes the great man in the flesh. 

" He looked exactly like his pictures, and there were 
several gentlemen with them, and they were all on 
horseback." 

And being boys, doubtless they ran after him up 
Colony street. It used to be said that the party called 
for a glass of water at the house once the residence of 
Deacon Walter Booth, since removed to make room for 
E. J. Doolittle's house. No. 285 Colony street. 

As General Washington and his suite passed up the 
road, no doubt he looked across toward the Hanging 
Hills. Did he know that his features were clearly 
(more clearly then than now) outlined in the rocks ? 
Maybe somebody told him. I wish we knew. Ah, me! 
how very much we might learn if dead lips could only 
speak. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

CHRISTMAS ILLUMINATION AT ST. ANDREW'S. 

T N the very first years of the existence of St. Andrew's 
* as a parish the yearly Christmas "illumination," as 
it was then called, was with tallow candles. Wooden 
frames to fit the windows were so arranged that a can- 
dle was at each window pane. These panes were about 
seven by nine inches, and probably thirty panes to a 
window. The frames were carefully kept from year to 
year to be produced and used at the proper time. A 
chandelier of tin, precariously suspended from the 
arched ceiling in the center of the church, and side 
lights of tin fastened to the posts which supported the 
galleries, held the inevitable tallow candles. 

All of these that were accessible were duly visited 
once in a half hour or so by some one armed with the 
" snuffers." The inaccessible lights had to be left with 
toppling wicks to drip tallow onto whomsoever it might 
fall. The last illumination was in 1833 or 1834. 

About 1830 one William Lawrence of Meriden in- 
vented a hanging oil lamp to be used in public build- 
ings. This lamp he patented. It was hailed as a 
success, and they were soon put into use in each of the 
three churches. 

These lamps put the yearly church candle lighting 
out of the way forever. Until the later years of the 
century the festival of Christmas was only observed by 
the small congregation that worshiped at St. Andrew's 
Episcopal church. Except, that persons from the other 
two denominations would attend there upon Christmas 
eve to hear the music. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. Ill 

The little church was always crowded on these occa- 
sions, as their annual recurrence was the one musical 
event of the year. The St. Andrew's of 1840 was a 
tiny, white wooden building on the southeast corner of 
the old cemetery on Broad street. 

There were youths and maidens then as there are 
now in these days, and they also had energy and in- 
genuity according to their lights. We of St. Andrew's 
were very proud of certain achievements of the previous 
summer, notably outside blinds and matting at the 
only door. Vestibule there was none. Some of the 
younger members had each paid for one blind, a few of 
the older people also assisting. 

Certainly the cool green light was a vast improve- 
ment over the glare of the before shadeless windows. 
Christmas of 1840 was at hand, and after the successes 
of the summer we felt that much was expected of us in 
the way of decorations, and in the manner herein set 
forth did we proceed to realize those expectations. 
Material was plenty enough. We could have a forest 
of hemlock for the asking. So we began by setting a 
pretty large tree in the middle of the building, much to 
the curtailment of its scanty seating capacity, and no 
doubt to the discomfort of the occupants of the adjacent 
" slips." 

To balance the center, a big hemlock was put in each 
of the four corners down stairs and in the galleries. 
The fronts of the latter were festooned by thin and 
ragged looking wreaths made of small twigs of hemlock 
tied together. Our next move was suggested by an in- 
genious young girl, who is at this present writing Mrs 
Marietta Pettee, the wife of the Rev. John T. Pettee. 
She originated the idea of simulating snow on the 
branches of our big trees by tying bunches of cotton 



112 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

batting on them. As we were nearly frozen in church 
every Sunday of our lives in the winter, this further 
suggestion of frigidity was certainly superfluous. , 

Our sense of the fitness of things must have been in 
abeyance, for our next step in this renaissance of deco- 
rative art was to introduce a tropical element. In those 
days eggs, although not as plenty as hemlock trees, 
were by no means forty cents a dozen as they are at this 
writing. Ten cents was thought a sufficient price. It 
was not difficult to get a half bushel or so of egg shells, 
which, dipped in yellow wax and fastened to^boughs of 
laurel, surmounting the square parts that upheld the 
galleries, might, by making believe a good deal like 
Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness, pass for lemon 
trees bearing fruit. 

Being serenely assured in our own minds that the 
whole affair so far was an immense success, we were 
unanimous in deciding that an emblem was needed for 
the perfection of the design, and here arose the first 
discord in the harmony of our aesthetic efforts. 

We had chosen a star as the most appropriate, but we 
were divided in opinion as to its location. One set as- 
serted that, as the wise men were themselves in the 
East when they saw the star it must have been shining 
in the western sky, and therefore the proper place for 
our emblem was at the west end of the church over the 
pulpit. 

Besides (and this made the east-enders waver), if the 
star was hung over the pulpit and opposite the door it 
could at once be seen by every one upon entering. 
Whereas, if placed at the east end over the singers' 
seats, it could only be viewed by turning around. 

We all felt that there was a great deal in that ; but 
then others equally logical maintained that, as the 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. II3 

wise men said they saw the star in the east, why, of 
course, the star was in the east, or how could they have 
seen it there. 

I have forgotten who decided the matter for us ; but 
finally the luminary was hung over the choir. I am 
sorry to say the effect was very disappointing. Gold 
leaf was not procurable by us. No wayfaring man but 
a fool could have mistaken our star for anything but 
paper. Another thing, it was all it could do to swing 
around and present its thin edge to the beholders, if 
there were any. 

But our intentions were good we knew, and accidents 
happen to the best of people, as we also knew. Our 
work was done, the aisles swept, an easy thing to do 
comparatively, for they were carpetless. Indeed, so 
were most of the slips, and cushionless as well. The 
lamps were washed and newly filled with whale oil. 
Mrs. Edwin Curtis' best pair of glass lamps were placed 
one on each side of the pulpit cushion. The fire (there 
was.but one) of wood in a box stove by the door ready 
to light, and the house was given over to silence for a 
few hours. 

At six o'clock the door was opened again and the 
church lighted. It was then the custom in all the 
churches that the south galleries should be set apart 
exclusively for the young men and boys. It was on 
this Christmas Eve that a number of them sat in the 
gallery with their hats on. 

An elderly and eccentric English lady, called by the 
young people Mrs. " Posie " Andrews, because she cul- 
tivated with her own hands a rather prolific and very 
irregular flower garden, observing this irreverence, 
shocking to her English prejudices, arose in the body of 
the church just before service, and with an air of giving 



114 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN 

a piece of information, told the violators of good man- 
ners and tradition that ''■ gentleme^i always removed 
their hats in the house of God." 

Every masculine head was immediately uncovered. 
As this Christmas Eve was to be a memorable occasion, 
the ladies of the choir wore white dresses, with wreaths 
on their heads — a very daring innovation it was thought. 
Some of those wreaths were made of artificial flowers, 
some of white everlastings. 

The singing at St. Andrew's was very good always, 
but was especially so on Christmas Eve. Edwin Cur- 
tis led the singing and played the bass viol. He also 
kept the key of the church, made the fire, swept the 
building, kept the oil lamps in order and boarded the 
minister. In the choir he was reinforced by Henry 
Saltonstall and Alanson Curtis, who each played the 
violin. Henry Judd and A. H. Curtis, formerly of the 
Savings Bank, and a Mr. Ford, each played the flute. 

Mr Ford is only remembered as a transient person, Jfi 

whose hair and complexion were blond, who always 
dressed in light-colored garments, and whose flute was % 

an ivory one. On the whole, he was considered more r^i 

ornamental than useful in the choir. ,| 

I cannot recollect the music sung, but I knov/ the 
grand old " Gloria in Excelsis " in plain chant was not 
omitted. At that time it was always sung after the 
reading of the psalms in the evening service 

Down in the congregation dear old Amos Curtis, 
who had been himself once a leader in the choir, fairly 
sung himself out into the aisle. 

He was one of the first of the family to connect 
himself with St. Andrew's, and the first to organize the 
choir, and the fruit of his labors have followed through 
several generations. For about eighty years from his 



'fj 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. II5 

day to this some who bear his name have been found 
doing their duty in the choir of St. Andrew's. He 
brought weekly in that early day the beginners in mu- 
sic to his house, and after "trying their tones, " instituted 
a course of instruction for their benefit — Edwin Curtis 
and Mrs. Ann Merriam, her brother Joel, the elder 
Lillets and others. The change which he lived to see, 
from the pitch pipe to the gilded pipe organ, might well 
arouse an enthusiasm airy enough to raise him off his 
feet. 

Hezekiah Rice stood up, tall and stately and reverent. 
He was a staunch Universalist, but he loved the Epis- 
copal liturgy. 

Saintly Esquire Merriam, Elisha Curtis, who dearly 
loved the Lord's house, the fathers and brothers and 
cousins of the Andrews family, the brothers and cousins 
and neighbors of the then numerous Curtis family and 
others whom I cannot name were there. 

And then when the sermon was preached and the 
closing anthem sung, and the stillness of the quiet 
prayer, which followed the benediction, broken, we all 
went our ways, in the middle of the road mostly, for 
sidewalks there were none. That was long ago. The 
violins and flutes were tuneless years ago. 

Those who handled them so deftly and those who 
listened and admired have long ago " Beheld the King 
in His beauty and the land that is very far off." The 
old church is now a tenement house on Liberty street. 
Here and there in the city of Meriden, in this year 
1899 you may still find a few elderly ladies who will 
smile as they recall that faraway time. It was a very 
good time, that of their youth, but they do not dispar- 
age the present. Some of them keep something of their 
tunefulness of voice and brightness of eye. And they 
have not lost all of their elasticity of spirits. 



Il6 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

They will not tell you that "the former times were 
better than these;" they are very content with the 
present, and so they will be with the future as it glides 
into the present and fades into the past, until to those 
who are now in the very morning of life the present 
has become to them in their turn the past of the Long 
Ago. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

CHURCH CHOIRS — THE TIBBALS PROPERTY. 

'T'HE only buildings between East Main and Olive 
^ streets in 1840 were the three churches. The Bap- 
tist Church on the northwest corner of the Broad street 
cemetery was a plain white structure, surmounted by 
a steeple, but without a bell. It was entered by 
two doors at the head of a flight of six or seven 
wooden steps. These doors opened into a lobby, from 
which, at each side of the gallery, stairs ascended. 
The door and stairs on the south side were used exclu- 
sively by the young men and boys for entering their 
special domain — the south gallery. 

The arrangement of the interior of the church was 
exceedingly plain. The ceiling overhead was flat and 
comparatively low. As the singers' gallery was spa- 
cious, it might have been to relieve this flatness of the 
ceiling that the architect had put an inverted bowl- 
shaped arch over the choir. 

This disregard of acoustics had, of course, the effect 
of carrying the sound away from the body of the church, 
and the singing, therefore, was heard to better advan- 
tage from the seats back of the choir than from the 
audience room. This dome-like ceiling was afterwards 
flattened and lowered, and the change was a decided 
improvement. The Sunday singing was conducted in 
the usual way. Curtains were drawn, partially conceal- 
ing the choir as they stood. These curtains were 
green. Then came the prolonged note giving the key, 
and rising of the choir after sounding it. 



Il8 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

At one time the resident minister, either Mr. Hervey 
or Mr. Howard, led the singing from the pulpit, and 
succeeded very well indeed. Afterward, Joel Miller 
became the choir leader, and for a good many years 
filled the place most acceptably. 

In instrumental aid the Baptist Church choir was 
very fortunate. Samuel Yale — called by his friends 
" Uncle Sam," and by his enemies " Old Sam " — was 
conceded by both friends and enemies to be "queer." 
He was not in the very least a religious man, but he 
went to meeting pretty regularly and played the bass 
viol, and did it very well. 

Sundays and week days his costume was always the 
same. Always a green baize or woolen roundabout 
jacket, his neck encircled by a very ragged and very 
dirty black satin stock. His headgear sometimes an 
old woolen slouch hat. At other times, for a touch of 
elegance, the cap was left off in favor of a very tall- 
crowned, stiff black hat, narrow and old-fashioned even 
in that day. The fate of this remarkable hat may as 
well be recorded here. Somebody set a lighted candle 
too near, quite under the brim, and this peculiar piece 
of headgear shriveled up and disappeared. The rag- 
ged black satin stock he wore to bed in his last sickness, 
and died with it on his neck. 

Although he was one of the richest men in town, in 
this rig he went to meeting, and for his own pleasure 
played the bass viol, or he would not have done it. 

" Captain " Howard played the double bass viol. He 
was another character. His full name was Horatio 
Nelson Howard. The owner of this big name was a 
very short, rotund Englishman who had drifted to 
Meriden. Nobody ever knew much about him. 

When he first came he must have had some money. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. II9 

for he owned at one time and, perhaps, he built the tall, 
narrow house near the Parker factory gate on High 
street. A very good house it was then considered to 
be. 

Sometime or other Captain Howard had been a gen- 
tlemen. Perhaps strong drink had brought him down. 
It proved to be the final ruin of him. 

The late Mrs, Bell, as Emily Avery, was for many 
years the leading soprano, Sarah Ives the leading alto. 
She left the choir when she became the wife of the Rev. 
Harvey Miller. Mrs. Miller's singing voice was sweet 
and sympathetic. She had very beautiful eyes, singu- 
larly serene and restful in their expression. 

Ira Twiss was also prominent in the choir. He en- 
tered into musical matters with the greatest zeal, and 
his evident delight in singing went far to compensate 
for his somewhat monotonous tenor. 

Late in the forties the Baptist Church was sold to the 
" Meriden Academical Association." They floored the 
space between the galleries, thus making a second 
story. The choir seats were not altered, nor were the 
old gallery seats. The upper room, formed by the 
division, was rented as a hall. For a considerable time 
it was the only public hall in town, the old tavern 
ball-room having become disused. The lower room 
was the academy school room. The society of Odd 
Fellows used the hall for their meetings. St. Andrew's 
parish, pending the building of their stone church on 
Broad street, rented the hall for Sunday services. In 
1849, Rev. A. N. Littlejohn preached in it for ten 
months. He is now bishop of the diocese of Long 
Island. 

The building was finally sold, and moved and made 
into a four-tenement house on Twiss street, where it 



I20 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

now Stands. The ground which it occupied was taken 
into Charles street, and a slight depression, still visi- 
ble on the side by the cemetery indicates the site of 
another vanished landmark. The old Tibbals house, 
of which an engraving is now the only vestige, in- 
significant as it appears, was once a dwelling-house 
of some pretension and of some note in the history 
of the town. Situated closely under the shadow of the 
Center Congregational Church, it was, nevertheless, 
once several feet above the level of the street. A wade 
covered porch, supported by pillars, projected from the 
front door, with seats on each side. Large cherry trees 
shaded it on the street side. 

The house was built about i794-'96 by Samuel Tib- 
bals. He came from Milford. He was a man of prop- 
erty, a widower, betw^een forty and fifty years of age. 
Soon after his advent into the town he married Chloe, 
the eldest (living) daughter of Dr. Hough. She was 
sixteen years old. 

Mr. Tibbals bought nearly or quite all the lands be- 
tween East Main and Charles streets, and between 
Broad and High streets. The Tibbals house was pe- 
culiar in this respect : It was never regularly bought or 
sold; it never changed ownership by actual purchase. 
This is a fact, unless the writer is mistaken, and in this 
matter a mistake is not admitted. 

When Mr. Tibbals left Meriden for the far, far West, 
Ohio, the house by some exchange passed into the 
hands of his father in-law. Dr. Hough, and at the doc- 
tor's death became by will the property of his son. Dr. 
Isaac I. Hough, in whose ownership it remained for 
many years. It was occupied for the greater part of 
those years by Dr. Hough's near relatives, and when for 
a few years these persons left the house, it was tenanted 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 12 T 

by some of his more distant connections. Dr. Hough 
had some peculiar notions about the devising of prop- 
erty by will, and selected his nephew and namesake, 
Isaac I. Tibbals as his heir, who therefore at the death 
of Dr. Hough became the owner. 

After the death of Isaac Tibbals' first wife, Lucy 
Cowles (who was also his cousin), Mr. Tibbals married 
Mary, the eldest daughter of General, or, as he was 
later known. Deacon Booth. After her death the house 
by some transfer of interests became the property of 
Deacon Booth, who in his turn gave it by will. to the 
Center Congregational Society. 

Mr. Tibbals was a devout and active Episcopalian. 
At the time of his advent into Meriden the Episcopal 
Church was only represented by half a dozen families, 
among whom the Andrews family was the most promi- 
nent. This family was English, and at the time of the 
Revolution were strong Royalists. 

An ancient maiden lady. Miss Lucy Andrews, used 
to tell the writer, getting much excited in the telling, 
that her grandfather, being a Tory, was not allowed by 
the authorities to go beyond the limits of his own land, 
the greater part of which lay south of West Main 
street and west of the present Meriden & Waterbury 
Railroad, which now traverses part of the old farm. 

The Andrews family were very well off, and were, 
almost as a matter of course, with their peculiar political 
views. Church of England people. 

The only Episcopal services in town were held at 
their house, and were only occasional. Into this small 
society Mr. Tibbals was naturally made very welcome. 
He brought some money and more enthusiasm, and at 
once interested himself in the building of the first Epis- 
copal Church. Some of Dr. Hough's family became, 



122 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

through Mr. Tibbals' influence, members of the so- 
ciety, some of the numerous Curtis family joined, and 
St. Andrew's Church was fairly started. 

The old dwelling we have been talking of was known 
and spoken of by the old inhabitants as the "Tibbals 
house." It is a mere waste of words to try to speak of 
the house and its environs, as they were so long ago ; to 
tell of the abundant fruit trees which shaded it, and the 
flower garden, divided by a rivulet flowing from across 
the road into the meadows on the other side. The 
source of this brook was an ever-living spring, which 
still supplies with drinking water the house occupied by 
Mrs. Lyman Butler, No. 458 Broad street. 

It is now not possible to see how the house could 
have stood so high above the level of the street. Yet 
so it was once. After its decadence a visit was made 
to the old building. A forlorn hope had been cherished 
that an old carved cupboard that had stood in the cor- 
ner of the basement kitchen might have escaped the 
ravages of irresponsible tenants. Needless to say such 
hope was futile. This had disappeared, as had also the 
old partitions that formed the passage-way of the cellar 
leading past the dark fruit cellar, and the cellar where 
the charcoal was stored in great bins, and the other cel- 
lar where the cider barrels and the vinegar barrels and 
and the winter's supply of salted meats were kept, and 
which passage led finally into the light, cheerful kitchen, 
with its wide fireplace and deep, brick oven, wherein 
had been baked to toothsome perfection the great loaves 
of daily bread, the rich loaves of wedding cake, and 
more than once or twice funeral baked meats. 

All were gone, as completely as the flower garden 
with its rivulet and narrow footbridge of years before. 
Instead of the doorsill over which one stepped into the 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 1 23 

once bright house place, one went down into a great 
open cellar. Not one board left to mark the old out- 
lines, and the cellar itself a yard deep in debris of all 
kinds. 

The old house, which more than any other save one 
had to do with the early history of St. Andrew's parish, 
became at last equally identified with the interests of 
the Center Congregational Church. The old house is 
gone, and the smooth grade of the green turf where 
it stood gives no sign of its old-time existence. 

The old well-sweep that the old-time thirsty school 
children drew down with upstretched arms to send the 
bucket splashing into the depths is not even remembered. 
The well itself was for awhile disused, but has been 
recovered, and the clear, cool water flows from the 
same source as it did a century and more ago. It is 
now (in 1899) carefully guarded. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE FIRST TAVERN WINTER EXPERIENCES. 

TN 1779, the turnpike not yet opened, the most tra- 
■^ veled road between Wallingford and Meriden passed 
through Ann and Curtis streets. Old people described 
Curtis street as "twisting about a good deal," Its 
lines led up to the door of the old Curtis homestead, 
standing some way east of the present line. At the 
present junction of Broad and Curtis streets the road 
turned abruptly toward the west, making at that point 
a sort of square. At the southwest corner of this open 
space there stood a large two-story farm-house. This 
was really the first tavern in the town, and, of course, 
the only one until the old " Half- Way House " was oc- 
cupied. In an "L," on the south side, was a country 
store. In this store could be found all the luxuries de- 
manded by the primitive style of housekeeping. Among 
these luxurious necessities, or necessary luxuries, were 
always West India sugar, molasses and spices, and 
always New England rum. They belonged together, 
for the rum bought the molasses and spices, the latter 
unground and unadulterated. When needed for high 
feasts, such as Thanksgiving (Christmas then did not 
count at all), ordination dinners or balls, weddings 
or funerals (to the latter relatives and acquaintances 
came from afar, and were expected to stay and partake 
of the funeral baked meats which custom required 
must be lavishly provided) , the brass or iron — sometimes 
wood or stone — mortar and pestle wjere brought into use, 
and, by laborious attrition, the spices were ground to 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 125 

powder. The children and other superfluous members 
of the family were expected to take turns at the fragrant 
drudgery. The very greatest and most important of 
all social functions was the ordination dinner and the 
ordination ball that followed the dinner. Both for the 
dinner and ball a liberal supply of liquors was supposed 
needful and proper. The last ordination ball given in 
Meriden was in 1803 when the Rev. Erastus Ripley 
was ordained. This ball was given in the old tavern 
ball-room. The last real ordination dinner was given 
when the Rev. Charles Hinsdale was installed in 1823. 
This dinner was at his own house, situated on Broad 
street. At this feast onions held an honorable and con- 
spicuous place, and liquors were so copiously provided 
that it was whispered a prominent member of society 
became quite incoherent in conversation. Mrs. Jerusha 
Plumb was wont to speak with enthusiasm of ordina- 
tion balls, They were, she said, very serious and 
stately divertisements, and very rigid and formal eti- 
quette was observed, also critical attention must be 
given to the dancing steps. "Very different from 
these modern balls," Mrs. Plumb would observe. 

Note that Mrs. Plumb's criticism was made in 1840. 
In the small store before spoken of cotton cloth and 
calico or "print "could be found in limited quantity. 
But up to the first ten years of 1800 nearly all textures 
for common wear were homemade. Linen was used 
for underclothing ; cotton cloth was thought to be ex- 
travagant. 

In almost every household would be seen the great 
wheel for spinning wool, the small or flax wheel, with 
reel which told off with a "click " every fortieth thread 
wound upon it. Forty threads made a "knot." In 
most of the farm houses the loom was the most 



126 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

conspicuous object in the kitchen. The flax grown on 
the farm was spun and woven into heavy sheeting and 
table linen, which being once achieved, would last a life- 
time and more. Ambitious housewives and daughters 
sometimes span a finer thread, which, carefully woven 
in intricate damask patterns, were made into towels 
and napkins. Some such are still in existence without 
rent or broken thread. The young woman of (then) 
marriageable age, from sixteen to twenty, who could 
card the wool into "handsome rolls," light and fluffy as 
down as they lay in great piles, and then spin them into 
*' cross-banded " yarn — this was a rare accomplishment 
— afterward knitting the yarn into Sunday stockings, 
ornamented with "clocks," was held as a model for 
her less nimble-fingered sisters. 

If, in addition, she could show a "chest of drawers " 
filled with household linen of her own spinning and 
weaving, marked with her initials in cross-stitch, she 
stood proudly forth as a prize to be coveted by the 
thrifty young farmers designing to settle favorably in 
life. 

Besides the more (or less) direct roads to Walling- 
ford, Westfield or Berlin, there were grass-grown lanes 
marked by the wheel ruts leading to isolated farms. 
Well-worn paths led also across the fields and over the 
hills to the quiet farm houses. In several instances 
these paths became disputed rights of way, causing 
family feuds and prolonged lawsuits that lasted for 
years. It must have taKcn a good deal of energy and 
strong nerve to get about in those days. A story was 
told of a certain "Aunt Griswold," who was notable 
in her time for efficiency in cases of sudden illness. 
She was called one winter night to attend a person liv- 
ing on the Westfield road. Taking her infant, wrapped 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 127 

in a white blanket, she mounted her horse and started. 
She had not gone far when her horse stumbled in a 
snowdrift and her babe was thrown from from her 
arms. The fall in the soft snow did not waken the 
child, and she looked about for what seemed to her a 
a long time before recovering the little one. 

Hilarious tales used to be told of winter night expe- 
ditions across the fields to visit the two or three-miles- 
off neighbors. Upon such unexpected visits or surprise 
parties the hostess would bring into the kitchen the 
wheat flour, the sour cream, the eggs and spices, and 
compound them into twisted cakes. Then, sitting 
down upon a chair in the chimney corner, she took the 
cakes from the huge moulding board placed on a chair 
at her side, and dropped them, one by one, into the 
kettle of boiling lard suspended from the crane in the 
fireplace. 

The cakes, hot from the frying pan, were washed 
down by mugs of cider or cups of milk; rows of apples, 
mellowed upon the hearth before the fire, and the 
cracking of nuts and the cracking of jokes went on with 
about equal briskness. After all, this is a world of 
compensations. 

With the turnpike came in new times. Horseback 
riding with pillions, as a common method of trav- 
eling, went out, and stages and gigs came in. 
The old house no longer stood in a corner. Its 
place was now on the turnpike. It lost its prestige as 
store and tavern combined. It was for a good many 
years known as the " Seth Plumb" house. Later it 
was for an equal number of years spoken of as the 
"Joel Miller" house. It is now, thanks to its solid 
timbers, standing in very good condition on South 
Broad street. 



128 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

The elegant home of Edward Miller occupies the site 
of the old store and tavern. The property has been 
in the possession of only two families for nearly, if not 
quite, a century. 

Liberty street until well into the forties had only two 
dwelling houses upon it. Both of these are standing 
upon their original sites, owned and occupied by Walter 
Hall and William Ridley. Upon the south side of the 
road the land fell toward the north, and was so cold and 
wet that no attempt at cultivation was made. It was 
used exclusively for pasturage. 

The whole hillside, from East Main street, between 
Broad and Camp streets, abounded in living springs, 
from each of which small but everflowing streams ran 
through the meadows into Harbor Brook. In the 
fields traversed by these rivulets grew in their season 
every wild flower indigenous to New England. Huckle- 
berry bushes were plentiful there, but, alas, snakes 
were also. 

Just where Center street crosses Liberty was a ra- 
vine. Abundant nut trees with oaks of a goodly size 
grew on the banks. A small artificial pond had been 
made there. This was locally known as "Jordan," it 
having been used (so tradition had it) in some prehis- 
toric 'period as a place for baptismal immersion. A 
stream flowing from this source is known to-day as 
Jordan Brook. 

The pond had been made, in the first place, to propel 
some crude machinery in two or three little shops. 
These were cramped little places, not more than eight 
or ten feet square, and containing nothing more compli- 
cated than a few dies and lathes. The water power, 
such as it was, was not used a great while, but the tiny 
pond and the trees which shaded it and the snakes 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 1 29 

which infested it remained until far into the fifties. 
In the shops the work was the making of some part of 
tin lamps. Only two or, at the most, three men were 
employed. The business was supposed to be profit- 
able, for the principal employe wore boots known to 
have cost five dollars a pair. He was called — among 
his friends, of course — a most extravagant person. It 
was on Liberty street that one of the earliest Meriden 
manufactures was started. It was here that Samuel 
Yale set up a forge and made nails by hand, each nail 
head being separately hammered. 

The first Samuel Yale made nails, the second was the 
owner of the little shops on Liberty street, when the 
work was finally removed to a large building. One of 
these shops was lived in for a number of years by 
Zilpha. She was the widow of a colored dependent of 
the Yales. Her husband, "Jack" (the two never 
seemed to have a surname), was the son of slaves, but 
he being born after a certain date was born free. 

He did not leave the Yale family, but continued a 
faithful servant until his death at the seaside by drown- 
ing. The Yale brothers, Samuel and Hiram, grieved 
for him very sincerely. His wife was given the little 
building as her home. Here she was made as comfort- 
able as a person of her temperament could be. She spent 
her whole waking hours in complaining. She wished 
to be thought an invalid, and did her best as far as she 
understood her role. 

She declared she had swallowed a frog, and she evi- 
dently thought the circumstance carried with it much 
distinction. Perhaps she had swallowed a frog, but 
her personal aversion to water was very marked. 

The making of tinware was probably next to nail 
making, and contemporary with that very likely was 



130 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

the making of the high back combs, once the extreme 
of fashion. These combs were — some of them — six or 
seven inches high, and were cut or carved, not stamped, 
into fern leaves or roses, with buds and foliage, or oak 
leaves and acorns, and so on. 

Two shops where these were made stood, until 1838, 
at the present junction of Center and East Main streets. 
They were finally moved down to the Corner, and for a 
while stood on posts to keep them out of the water on 
the north side of East Main street, about opposite 
Crown street, certainly not far from that. 

In those days nothing that would be called machinery 
was in use. All the processes were slow, but — far 
from us all be insinuations — the finished products were 
durable. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

INTERIORS OF THE CHURCHES. 

T N each of the three Meriden churches the place which 
■^ answers to the lecture room of this day was then in 
the basement. The one at the Congregational Churcn 
was the most comfortable of them all. For one thing, 
it was not quite so much underground. The door sill 
was level with the surrounding yard. 

Here for some years — certainly as late as 1846 — the 
town meetings were held. Here might be seen the 
local politicians standing about the door, with a not in- 
frequent divergence of a large contingent to the old 
barroom. They returned from there to the basement 
door to renew with increased zeal and vehemence their 
weighty arguments. 

There was a pulpit or desk in the room, but I do not 
think it was ever used as such. A large table with sev- 
eral deep drawers served all purposes. In these table 
drawers were deposited the Sunday school library 
books, and from it the books were distributed. A box 
stove in the middle of the ror>m and plenty of wooden 
benches completed the furnishing. 

The Baptist basement had the same general features, 
only tl'c^' 1'j.e entrance to the room was effected by a 
step 'om the door. Unless much pre- 

cai^! , .J.... .. caused an unduly abrupt ingress. 

This peculiarity was once the cause of an unexpected 
pause in the exercises of the weekly conference meet- 
ing. Certain young men (those who remain of them 
are now sober and grave upholders of law and order) had 



132 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

lost somehow {at least one of them had) their usual 
sense of latitude and longitude. It seemed the part of 
good comradeship to see the unfortunate one safely 
home, two of the party meanwhile sitting upon the step 
of the main entrance waiting" the return of the other 
Samaritans. 

It occurred to their minds while waiting that it would 
make a good impression if they attended the prayer 
meeting. No sooner thought than acted upon, and 
Deacon Goodrich's exhortation was interrupted by the 
plunging in on all fours of a couple of bewildered sin- 
ners, who were unable to resume a normal position 
without help. This little affair was a surprise in more 
senses than one. It opened the eyes to a state of things 
unsuspected. 

The engraving of St. Andrew's Church in Dr. 
Davis' history is not quite an accurate one. The chim- 
ney did not rise from the apex of the roof, but from the 
northwest corner. The steps were a single flight, and 
rose directly from the footpath. They were of stone, 
so rough that to call them hewn is to compliment them. 
These steps led, as did those of the Baptist Church, up 
to an unprotected platform before the entrance door. 
The steps and the walls at the side formed a lobby with 
an earthen floor, with a door on the south side. 
Through this lobby was the entrance into a bare, low 
room of some size. The inevitable box stove, set upon 
a hearth of bricks occupied the center. The pipe from 
the stove intersected with another that went the whole 
length of the room and through the windows, both on 
the north and south side of the house. This plan had 
been adopted to obviate the smoking of the stove, 
which, it is proper to remark, it did not do. 

Perhaps owing to the terrible dampness of the place 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 1 33 

the smoke and soot condensed, and a black fluid dripped 
from the joints of the stovepipe onto the floor and 
benches. Finally, some bright genius caused little tin 
pails to be hung at every joining of the pipe, and thus, 
in addition to the box stove and wooden benches, feat- 
ures of the other damp basements, the Episcopalians 
had a triple row of tin pails overhead. 

In all the church buildings the pulpit was at the west 
end of the auditorium, with the choir opposite over the 
entrance. In all the three choirs curtains were hung 
in front of the singers. These were of red moreen, 
and perhaps eighteen inches in depth. 

In all the churches the clergyman was expected to 
read the metrical psalms and hymns entire given out 
for singing. While this was being done the curtains 
were scrupulously drawn together, concealing the 
singers. Then came the prolonged keynote, given in 
the first place by the instruments, then in accord with 
the singers who rose as the sound ceased. 

Another similarity in the interior of the church 
buildings were the slips with doors, which it was 
thought decorous to open and close at the ingress of the 
occupants. These doors were fastened by wooden 
buttons. As may be supposed, there were occasions 
when the door clapping was much in evidence. As 
these wooden buttons were on the outer or aisle side, 
the reaching over of the one at the head to let the rest 
of the family out was one preliminary of a closing 
service. He, if an understander of good custom, held 
the door open until all had passed into the aisle, when, 
with emphasis, he closed the door and fastened it. 

The Baptist and Congregational Churches did not 
differ materially in their order of public worship, and 
the general plan of the pulpits and accessories were 



134 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

much the same A small plain table below the pul- 
pit, with a curled maple cane-seated chair placed at 
each end, were the same in both. At the Congrega- 
tional Church the drapery of the pulpit was the most 
elaborate and costly of the three, the material being of 
crimson damask, while the others were obliged to be 
content with crimson moreen. The singers' seats of 
the Congregational Church were also enriched with 
imitation windows, which were draped with red 
moreen, damask being altogether too costly in those 
days to be placed back of the congregation. 

The ritual of the Episcopal Church, of course, re- 
quired a more elaborate arrangement. The chancel, 
with its bare floor, was inclosed by a plain railing, and 
the narrow, wooden kneeling bench encircling the 
chancel was also bare of covering. Within the chancel 
stood the bare table with its two plain chairs. Two or 
three steps led into the "reading desk'" answering to 
the lecturn of later days. This had two doors, care- 
fully closed when the minister was within. Above this 
the pulpit was reached by a short flight of stairs upon 
each side. Those upon the south side were rarely 
used; never in the author's experience. The minister, 
leaving the vestry room near the outside entrance under 
the gallery stairs, walked the whole length of the 
church and entered the reading desk, fastening the door 
after him. 

When the sermon time came he left the desk, closing 
the door again. (By the way, the ministers at the other 
churches also always fastened the pulpit doors upon 
entering or leaving.) The clergyman leaving the read- 
ing desk, traversed the length of the aisle the second 
time; returning to the vestry, divested himself of his 
white surplice, and pulling on a voluminous black silk 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. I35 

gown, passed for the third time throiig-h the 
aisle, ascended to the pulpit, where he preached 
the sermon and in the afternoon read the closing 
hymn. 

Until 1830 the church had a sounding-board sus- 
pended over the pulpit. It was thought to be unsafe, 
and was removed. This sounding-board is still in ex- 
istence; at present it is " put to base uses." It is 
hoped it may be recovered and restored to something 
of its former dignity. A clock in use in the auditorium 
of this old church is still in existence, and keeping 
accurate time in the present St. Andrew's parish 
house. 

Of course in those early years there was no thought 
of chapels or parish houses. Any extra religious ser- 
vices were held in the basements of the churches. The 
Lenten services at St. Andrew's were invariably held 
on the mornings of Wednesday and Friday. Rigorous 
and austere rites were these weekly, morning prayers. 
There was never any fire, no matter how cold and 
stormy the day might be. 

Edwin Curtis, who managed the parish and all its 
concerns, considered a fire of a week-day to be a sinful 
extravagance. But in those days nobody expected to 
be warm in the cold weather. True, some people lived 
through it, but it was a case of *' the survival of the 
fittest." The ritual at. these morning services was the 
Morning Prayer and the Litany. 

As half the time there was no resident clergyman, it 
would often be the case that the aged senior warden, 
Elisha Curtis, would read the morning service and 
Edwin Curtis make the only audible responses, which 
he always did in a very loud voice, and with great and 
(as he went on) increasing rapidity. 



136 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

Custom severely endorsed St. Paul's dictum that 
" women should not be heard in the churches." It was 
held to be unseemly for the women to respond above a 
whisper. 

The Congregational society was by far the largest 
and most popular. The Baptist came next, the Epis- 
copal very much the smallest, both in respect to the 
building and numbers, but holding its own in other 
ways. There were, of course, people who held other 
sectarian opinions. 

Hezekiah Price and his son-in-law, Calvin Coe, with 
his family, of whose three daughters Dr. Hough said 
" they were the most graceful walkers in town" (ad- 
ministering at the same time a severe snub to an 
unlucky member of his own family), were often at St. 
Andrew's. They were Universalists. Esquire Pomeroy 
and his family, also of the same faith, frequented the 
Baptist Church. 

The families of Charles and Edmund Parker were, of 
course, Methodists, the elder brother, John, being a 
clergyman in that denomination, but they with their 
families were often at St. Andrew's. Edmund Parker 
afterward became identified with this parish, and so 
continued until his death, in 1868. 

Dr. Hough and his nephew, Isaac Tibbals, w'ere 
supposed to hold heretical opinions. They were Uni- 
tarians. They were, however, constant attendants at 
the Center Church. 

Although the observance of the Lenten season was 
confined to the Episcopalians, a psychologist might be 
interested in the fact that the protracted meetings, 
which were a feature of the revival system of the era, 
were always held sometime in the lengthening or Lenten 
days. The more unique features of these revival 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. I37 

meetings are of the past. Sometimes — often, indeed — it 
would be that all but the most necessary work was 
neglected. The factories were nearly, sometimes quite, 
closed, and everybody gave themselves up to religious 
exercises of, it must be conceded, the most lugubrious 
nature. A deep gloom settled upon all faces. There 
were few luxuries to give tip, and not many amuse- 
ments to abandon. 

True, there were people who did sometimes dance, 
and there were those who sometimes played whist, but 
their best friends really did not know what would be- 
come of them if they persisted in such evil doings. 
This principle or prejudice had nothing to do with 
Lenten or revival seasons, as dancing and card playing 
were looked upon as hopelessly demoralizing all the 
year round by many excellent people. 

Denominational feeling was far stronger and more 
exclusive than in these later years. There was a great 
deal of intolerant nonsense. The writer recalls the 
amusing air of being almost dangerously broad in 
opinion with which a most excellent man announced that 
" he believed there were some very good people among 
the Episcopalians." 

Far away are the old days, and almost forgotten are 
the old prejudices. Passion Week is now seriously rec- 
ognized by all Christian sects as a season of peculiar 
fasting and prayer. Christmas and Easter are now 
also joyously observed by all classes of Christian 
people. Easter in the old times was signalized only by 
extra hymns set apart for that purpose. 

Sitting in the warm, well lighted, cushioned and 
carpeted church, waiting for the advent of the surpliced 
choir , one can hardly realize that the Lenten season of 
1899 means just the same as the ascetic observance of 



138 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN, 

1836. Far apart as are these two periods, they are less 
remote from each other than are the Eastertide solem- 
nities in all the churches from the meagre and only one 
at St. Andrew's in the time gone by. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

HOUSECLEANING TIME. 

OOMEBODY who evidently knew all about it said: 

" In the spring a young man's fancy 
Lightly turns to thoughts of love." 

Of course the verdancy of the season is coincident with 
the cogitations of the embryo town councillor. One 
turns with reluctance from a topic so fascinating and 
replete with possibilities to one of more practical im- 
port. It was in the spring that the thoughts of the 
old-time, thoroughbred New England housekeeper 
turned more especially to the cyclical upheaval of the 
domestic system known to all men as housecleaning. 

In the former years, even before the branching trees 
began to respond to the pulsing of the rich juices at 
their roots, the preparation for the household orgies 
began. The soft-soap making was the first movement. 
Did any one of this generation ever by any chance see 
an ash-leach? One fancies not, for it was a structure 
obsolete years ago. In its day it rivaled the modern 
stovepipe as an incentive to an energetic vituperative 
method of phrasing on the part of the (by courtesy) 
head of the house. 

Preliminary nagging began about St. Valentine's 
day, and if all went well the ash-leach was in operation 
by the first of March. A barrel would answer the pur- 
pose well enough, but being easy to arrange, the pains- 
taking matrons would have none of it. The properly 
built ash-leach was a four-sided, quadrilateral structure 



140 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

of beards, the point supported about a foot from the 
ground by a rude but stout frame of sticks. Into the 
receptacle the wood ashes, preferably oak or hickory, 
which had been carefully saved through the winter, 
were poured until it was full. Water was then judi- 
ciously applied that it might neither too fast nor too slow 
percolate the ashes. 

The lye thus resulting was carefully watched, and as 
soon as the pale color suggested the strength to be ex- 
hausted, the boards were taken down and the leached 
ashes applied to the garden or corn field. 

All the long winter every particle of fat and grease 
had been carefully saved, looked to and guarded from 
inroads of "mice and men." One eminent housekeeper 
went so far as to prepare bits of rags, with which the 
plates used at meals were wiped, and the result added 
to the precious accumulation. These rags were care- 
ixxWy boiled, and the water from them set apart to cool 
and then skimmed of its accumulated fat. 

The necessary boiling together of the lye and the fat 
was done either at a chosen spot in the back yard or in 
the great, deep, open fireplace. After the boiling, the 
compound was poured into its final receptacle, and, in- 
consistent as it sounds, water was then added from time 
to time to thicken it. If the soap ' came " properly, 
great was the jubilation thereat; and if not (and some- 
times the most skillful soap-maker failed), it had to be 
put up with like other misfortunes. 

The inferior economics having been successfully dealt 
with, the notable housewafe began the real business of 
the season, which was scrubbing and " nothing but it " 
— at least not much. Walls and floors, tables and 
chairs and bedsteads, all had to be scriibbed, except the 
mahogany articles, which were oiled, and the cherry 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. I4I 

tables that were waxed and then rubbed bright. It 
was a process that brought out the richness of the 
grain of the wood as nothing else ever did or ever will, 
perhaps, and besides, being laborious and, to an ex- 
hausting degree, weary work, it was much in favor; 
for to meet the exigencies of housekeeping with any 
ease of method was "a reproach and a hissing " in the 
estimation of those assiduous New England house- 
mothers. 

The scouring of the tinware was an important feature 
of the crisis. Rows upon rows of shining pails and 
pans and utensils of all sorts were displayed for the ad- 
miration — and exasperation — of the less muscular or 
less well provided sisterhood. The store of home- 
made house linen, blankets and counterpanes was duly 
looked over, washed, ironed, counted and consigned to 
another twelve months of oblivion. The weary but 
complacent old time housekeeper held herself in readi- 
ness to attend to her butter and cheesemaking, her 
pickling, preserving and fruit drying. 

Sausage making and curing of hams, the salting of 
barrels of beef and the preparing of the hung beef 
for the winter's consumption were presided over with 
serious ceremonial and solemn incantations. Th|^ try- 
ing out of lard and tallow and the candle making for 
the year's supply brought the year nearly to its weary 
end and the next bousecleaning season. 

But the old-fashioned housekeeper has gone, and the 
old order has changed. In these days to scour tin with 
vigor is to scour holes in the same ; and there are lovely 
granite and agate and enameled wares, and there are 
all sorts of soaps and powders that, if one believes the 
advertisers, one has only to shut up the different sorts 
in a room by themselves, put on one's best gown, and 



l42 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN, 

wait while the compounds, in sheer competition, do the 
work. 

In the olden time of soft-soap making, which opened 
the season of miscellaneous scrubbing, very few carpets 
were in use. The writer remember a best room on 
North Colony street in which the furniture was a table, 
six plain chairs and a '"Boston" rocking chair. The 
only indication of any ornaments were a volume of 
extracts from Shakespeare and a pitcher of purple 
lilacs on the table. The floor was bare of carpet or 
rug, and the walls were paneled with oak; but the floor 
was as white almost as paper, and the cherry table 
shone with beeswax and rubbing. 

One has seen since then floor rugs that cost a fortune, 
tables of carved ivory loaded with costly curios from 
every known land under the sun; but somehow the 
picture of that old-time room, with its atmosphere of — 
well, yes — intense purity, has remained unchanged since 
that springtime of long ago. 

Candle-making was a very serious affair. " Dipped " 
candles were used first; afterward tin moulds came 
into use. As may be supposed, the candles were used 
with severe economy. The Saturday cleansing and 
polishing of the steel candlesticks and snuffers was the 
abhorred task usually alloted to the younger girls in the 
family. 

Whale oil in glass lamps was a luxury reserved for 
special and ceremonious occasions, and the glass lamps 
were often the most conspicuous mantel ornaments in 
what were then supposed to be the best rooms. 

By 1836 carpeted parlors were common, but I doubt 
if there were a dozen houses in Meriden where carpets 
were in use in the living rooms. 

Not far from this time it was that cooking stoves 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 143 

began to take the place of the open fireplaces furnished 
with crane and hooks. With the advent of stoves and 
the use of coal came a change in housekeeping methods 
and new outlets for housewifery energies. 

In some former period of existence (in the spring, 
probably), Edwin assured Angelina that 

'• The sigh that rends thy constant heart 
Shall break thy Edwin's, too," 

or words to that effect. Apparently the time had now 
arrived. At breakfast Angelina would observe, apropos 
of nothing, that something ailed the kitchen stove. 
Edwin, of course, would become more or less thought- 
ful upon hearing this, and when further instructed 
that before anything else could be properly done the 
stovepipe must be taken down and cleaned, Edwin, 
whistling "The Long, Long Weary Day," immediately 
became plunged in an anxious bustle, and was obliged 
to meet a man on important business. 

Then Angelina, being an active young woman, af- 
firmed to herself that anybody could take down a stove- 
pipe. She burned her hands and blackened her face 
and dress, but the stovepipe was finally lying in sec- 
tions in the yard. After an hour's struggle, the pipe, 
thoroughly cleaned, of course, was ba ;]: more or less 
in its place on the stove. 

Edwin, probably a wise man in his generation, would 
accept with ar'' '« 'I'ty ? ^^ry poor dinner, and would 
remark as he jcticut Havana, with the 

slightest ace. . • ., j<j ououn : 

" You did not get that stovepipe quite straight. " 

Then he changed his cigar to the other side of his 
mouth, holding it firmly between his teeth, as he rapped 
the pipe lightly on one side and then on the other. 



144 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGf AND TOWN. 

And behold the sheet iron fiend that resisted the per- 
suasions of hammer and hatchet, the tongs and the 
rolling pin, the potato masher and the big shears, yields 
to the gentle manipulation, and is settled and fixed 
firmly in its place. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

MANUFACTURE OF THE HOOP SKIRT. 

"DEADER, do you remember the learning of " didac- 
^^ tic pieces" and hymns, to be repeated to the 
minister when he made a pastoral visit, or to any other 
unfortunate on whom parental partiality could lay 
hands. 

Among- others one recalls, as being of a high moral 
tone, and therefore especially and most particularly 
appropriate for the hearing of the victimized parson, 
was one of which only four or five lines are retained in 
the memory. The stanzas, after setting forth the folly 
of being proud of new clothes, went on to assert that 
the 

" Poor sheep and silk worms wore 
That very clothing long before." 

Now children are regular Gradgrinds as to facts, and 
truly this statement seemed to be lacking in veracity. 
Besides, why should the clothing be worn long before? 
One was pretty sure it was not so worn ; but being 
afraid of a sheep, and going nearly into hysterics at the 
touch of a worm, one could not investigate the matter 
as one could wish. 

The author (Dr. Watts, probably, it sounds like him) 
went on giving more enigmatical information, and fin- 
ished by stoutly affirming that 

" The art of dress did ne'er begin 
Till Eve, our mother, learned to sin." 

Having grown older since the days of "didactic 



146 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

poetry," one is naturally less particular in the matter of 
facts, and instead of disquieting oneself, because one's 
fellow beings have too much idealty, one sees a fine 
opportunity for criticism. Regarding the above coup- 
let, there are two points to which exception is taken. 

First, the omission of Adam's name, as though Eve 
were the only sinner. Exact justice requires that the 
lines read thus: " Till Adam and Eve," etc. 

In the next place, it is apparent to a reflective (femi- 
nine) mind that Eve's procedure in this matter of the 
*' art of dress " was not reprehensible, but, on the con- 
trary, was laudable and to be approved, since she was 
simply making the best of the circumstances, being, as 
well as she knew how, equal to the emergency, in which 
respect her daughters have diligently followed her 
example ever since. 

That Eve originated the "art of dress" explains, 
there is no doubt, why the despotic genius to whose 
exactions and impositions we submit with long suffering 
patience, and who initiates and presides over the vaga- 
ries of bonnets and gowns, not to speak of hats and 
coats, has hitherto been accounted feminine and spoken 
of as Dame Fashion. Strict accuracy now requires 
that the presiding genius be considered complex in 
character, and be styled Dame Fashion in America, 
Monsieur Fashion in France. 

Within the last few years elements of comfort and 
common sense have steadily dominated the rulings of 
costume, and we must trust to the latter trait for pro- 
tection in the threatened revival of the hoop skirt 
atrocity. 

Still, if Dame and Monsieur Fashion require it of us, 
we shall very likely ignore comfort and common sense, 
and treat the hoop skirt, as human nature is said to 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. I47 

treat vice, "We shall first pity " (ourselves), "then en- 
dure, and then" — no, not embrace; nobody can do 
that. There is a standoffishness about a hoopskirt. 
Crinoline is another thing, and may possibly add a 
grace to costume ; but a hoop skirt cannot. 

Crinoline is a modern invention, but hoops were worn 
in 1744, a century and a half ago. In 1833, it was con- 
sidered elegant to expand the bottom of the skirt by the 
use of " Jackson cord " — a stiff hempen rope which was 
inserted in the hem of the petticoat, and which was ex- 
tremely apt to break from its fastenings, with results 
mortifying to the wearer. 

During the fifties the hoop was brought into use 
again by the Empress Eugenie, who for her own con- 
venience rehabilitated an old fashion. There were few 
periodicals in those years that devoted any space to de- 
tails of costume. "Godey's Lady's Book " is the only 
one recalled, so the would-be fashionables did the best 
they knew how, and followed suit with Jackson cord 
(which had come to the front again), coffee-sack, grass- 
cloth and starched petticoats. 

The making of hoop skirts in Meriden was brought 
about, so to speak, by carpet bags. For some years 
carpet bags had been rather an important production 
here. Very likely there are yet to be found in attics and 
closets specimens of these queer traveling appurten- 
ances. They were of various sizes, but commonly, 
perhaps, a foot and a half square. The material used 
was Brussels carpeting; remnants, samples and so on, 
bought in quantity. They were lined with imperfect 
dress muslins procured directly from the factories. 
The handles were stiff rope covered with the carpeting, 
and they were fastened, 01 closed, by small brass pad- 
locks. The keys of these locks were hung by a linen 



I4o RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

thread, of the kind used in the making, to one of the 
kind used in the making to one of the handles. 

These keys were, of course, intended to be detached, 
and kept securely, but it was not unusual to see carpet 
bags left on a car seat or in a rack with the tiny and in- 
efficient key hanging by a thread. Queer as it seems, 
these bags were the fashion ; and a new carpet bag was 
an essential particular in a wedding outfit. For several 
years the trade in these articles was a brisk one, and, 
as the material used was far from being expensive, the 
manufacture was profitable. 

The shop where the business was carried on was lo- 
cated on the southwest corner of Broad and Camp 
streets. A number of yoimg women were employed, 
and the work was also given out to be done at home by 
persons, who thus added a nice little sum to their 
pocket money. Carpet bags had pretty much had their 
day, and the business was flagging, when the principal 
of the concern saw while in New York the method of 
making hoop skirts, then a new manufacture. 

Being a man " who never let the grass grow under 
his feet, "he came home with the making of the new 
article fully determined upon. 

"But how," said somebody, "how v.'ill you weave 
the tapes? You have no looms. " 

"That is easy enough," said Mr. . "It is only 

just three or four sticks and some strings. Anybody 
can do it. I could do it myself — if I only knew how. " 

The looms were erected and somebody found who 
"knew how "to run them, and the tape weaving was 
begun in the old clock shop. The wires were covered 
in a shop over east, and the articles completed in a 
building at the corner of Camp and Pratt streets. The 
cost of making was not great, and for awhile they sold 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 149 

at a large profit. But it was soon found that the tapes, 
which were woven in a peculiar way for the insertion 
of the wire, could be bought quite as cheap as they 
could be woven here, and very soon there were half a 
dozen "hoop skirt factories" in town, most of them 
only occupying a room or two. 

In a little while, the war having broken out, cotton 
became scarce and dear, the market was also over- 
stocked, and the business ceased to be profitable. 

Not far from this time, too. Queen Victoria had 
brought the Balmoral skirt into favor, and a factory was 
built for their manufacture, which afterward, much 
enlarged, became the " woolen mill " of to-day. 

If the Master of Costume in France and his satellites 
in America so decree, we shall probably, sooner or 
later, ignore comfort and common sense, and the hoop 
skirt will be upon us. (The pun made itself.) 

However, the general taste in the matter of apparel 
has been educated by the facilities of these later years, 
and it is to be hoped this will prevent any style from 
becoming positively ridiculous, as many of the former 
modes certainly were. An emendation can be seen in 
the so-called revival of the modes of the "Empire," 
and of i860. The latter certainly do not have the 
awkward features of the gowns actually worn at that 
period. The lines are less abrupt, and are longer and 
more flowing. The feet are more sensibly shod, and 
the bonnets and hats at present worn make an entirely 
different thing of the costume. 

A young and pretty woman will look more or less 
charming and attractive in anything, and the crinoline 
may be endured; but nothing, not even custom or a 
professional beauty, can make a peripatetic hencoop 
graceful. 



C H AFTER XXIV. 

THE FIRST CATHOLICS. 

TTmust have been very early in the spring of 1836 that 
•*■ Curtis L. North rushed into the room (his tactics 
were always to seem enthusiastic) where Dr. Hough, 
Major Cowles and the ladies of the family were at tea, 
with the announcement : " The railroad is to go through 
the Corner." 

Major Cowles was not moved out of his usual sedate 
composure by the news; he knew all about it before. 
For he and Judge Brooks were among the earliest pro- 
jectors of the scheme, and were prominent and influen- 
tial members of the first board of directors. 

A route through South Meriden was talked of, and 
one on the east side of Meriden had been thought of, 
but dire was the dismay when either project became 
known. Nothing less than total annihilation was pre- 
dicted to crops and stock, and everything else. Visions 
of dismembered cattle, scattered about the blazing hay- 
fields, disturbed the sleep of the landowners. For how, 
they wished to be told, could they spend their time in 
watching to keep their animals off the rails; and in a 
dry season it would be madness to allow the fire-laden 
engine to run the risk of setting fire to everything com- 
bustible. Men, who lived to know better, inquired, 
with pathos, what good their lives would be to them if 
their farms were to be cut into in such reckless fashion. 

The route finally adopted proved altogether the most 
practicable. For one thing, it was pretty nearly a 
straight one. It had few curves; for it was then an 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 151 

article of sapient railroad faith that the cars could not 
be carried with safety around an abrupt, or, rather, a 
short bend. Also, it could be made less expensive, the 
cutting at " Holt hill " being the only considerable one 
between Hartford and New Haven. This cutting was 
at first only wide enough for one narrow track. At a 
point not far from the present site at the Curtis home, 
the highway was really an excavation into the hill- 
side, nearly overhung by the high bank on the one 
hand, while on the other was a sheer descent of many 
feet, making a dangerous declivity, almost without pro- 
tection. 

The spot was wild and lonely — a favorite haunt of 
tramps, and was known as " Dugway." The land just 
here was heavily wooded; but Holt hill itself was a 
smooth cluster of pastures, famous for its luscious 
blackberries, whose low vines in the autumn carpeted 
the ground with crimson. The road over the hill joined 
" Farms road" just where it does now. At the foot of 
the hill stood the Holt farm house, a large, old- 
fashioned dwelling house of an excellent type, with 
ceilings traversed overhead by carved oaken beams, 
with paneled side walls and floors of oaken planks, so 
solid that it was almost impossible to drive a nail into 
them. The house had its own bit of romantic history. 
When Russell Holt, who was the owner fifty years 
ago, was a young man, his mother, as the New England 
custom was, had bound to her until the age of eighteen 
a young girl. As might have been expected, the young 
people fell in love, very truly, as it turned out. 

The mother strenuously opposed the affair, but she 
was ill, and could not dispense with the young girl's 
help, even if she might have sent her away, a course 
which the law forbade, for the state that gave the time 



152 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

and labor of the bound boy or girl to the employer, also, 
when appealed to, protected the former from injustice. 
Finding herself near death, and, it may be supposed, 
thus having the greater influence, she exacted a promise 
from her son that he would never marry the girl. The 
letter of the promise he kept. He never married ; but 
the young woman never left him. She lived in his 
house as his housekeeper and companion imtil his death 
at a great age. At first gossip and scandal were busy 
with the affair, but as time went on it died out. At 
Mr. Holt's death he left all he could leave to the woman 
who had been constant to him through evil report and 
good for sixty years. The house was torn down some 
years ago, and a modern dwelling now stands in its 
place. 

Until the era of the N. H. & H. railroad, the only 
Emerald Isle man in town was a bright, witty fellow 
named Robert Clark. He was not a Protestant exactly, 
nor did he call himself a Catholic, although he was once 
heard to observe "he could be one easy enough." It 
happened one time that Julius Pratt wished to increase 
the force of water that propelled the great wheel of his 
factory, and Robert was engaged to dig a sluice which 
would give the needed supply. Robert agreed to do 
the work at a fixed price per foot. He had seen that 
the soil was soft and porous and the grade downward 
from the lake whence the water was taken. He cut and 
loosened the sods to the length and width required, re- 
moved a few to get the needed pressure, and then sat 
down to comfortably smoke his pipe while the sluice- 
way cleaned itself. This exploit so recommended itself 
to Mr. Pratt that Robert became his trusted factotum. 
This, however, was after the railroad had been in oper- 
ation long enough to change a good many things. 



RV.COLLECTIONS OF A NKW ENGLAND TOWN. 153 

The contract for the Meriden section of the road was 
taken by one Colonel Henry. He brought with him a 
large compijny of laborers, who were settled in barracks 
built on the rising ground north of Holt hill. These 
new settlers were a great curiosity to the citizens. A 
walk to Holt hill became one of the recognized recrea- 
tions. These dwelling places were, of course, more or 
less crowded, but they were warm and comfortable, and 
many of them were kept beautifully clean and nice. 
There were children in plenty, some of them beautiful 
little ones. One infant in particular was an especial 
attraction, so very lovely was it. In every room some 
emblem of the religious faith of the occupants was con- 
spicuously placed. Mass was celebrated certainly once 
while the work at Holt hill was in progress. The 
writer recollects very well hearing it spoken of, as it 
was naturally considered an event 

There is a tradition that this mass was celebrated by 
a French abbe who passed through town and was im- 
portuned by some of the workmen to give them the 
privilege. It is also said that the service was held in 
the open air under a large tree, necessarily cut down. 
This was very likely the case, as there was no room 
large enough to hold even a small congregation, and 
there were many large trees of the first growth scat- 
tered about. 

Colonel Henry sometimes lamented the want of a 
pastoral head over his — especially upon pay days — 
rather difficult contingent. In the course of a few 
years the changes made by the widening of the railroad 
track so altered the grade that the narrow — for teams 
could not possibly pass each other there — and danger- 
ous " Dugway " was altogether effaced. Probably no 
one now living could tell exactly where it used to be, 



154 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

although the name was used afterward in connection 
with a part of the road much farther to the southward 
and having no likeness to the old Dugway. 

When the work on the road was completed some of 
the men found employment in the town and settled 
themselves in homes. By this time, too, the pioneer, 
Robert Clark, had brought his family and settled them 
in a comfortable home on Broad street. A relative, one 
John Conley, had also built a small house near where 
he lived with his mother, a gentle, quiet old woman, 
who spoke only the Gaelic, and wore a "mutch" with 
white borders, and crown encircled with a broad, black 
band, and who, when her housework was done, seemed 
to find her chief solace in her rosary. 

Several persons are remembered who were most de- 
vout in their daily devotions, being in this respect a re- 
proach to their more lax Protestant neighbors. Other 
relatives of the two families followed, but they were 
Episcopalians. The Catholic population increased but 
slowly. All who wished the especial privileges of their 
own church went, preferably, to New Haven. In 1847 
or 1848 a Roman Catholic church was organized, and 
the building hitherto the property of St Andrew's 
parish, was bought and occupied by them. 

In 1842, the society of St. Andrew's had bought and 
set up the first church organ in Meriden. The cost of 
the instrument was $400. The case was of oak. The 
keyboard was enclosed behind gothic doors, which 
rolled to either side when the organ was in use. Its 
voice was excellent, being pure, firm, and with a rich 
fullness never excelled by any of the costly instruments 
which succeeded it. When the newly organized society 
of St. Rose's parish bought the St. Andrew's Church 
building at the corner of Broad and Olive streets, the 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 155 

organ went with it. Afterward it was given by St. 
Rose's society to the Mission at Wallingford, and was 
at last entirely destroyed in the tornado of 1879. Miss 
Hannah M. Donovan, of West Main street, sang to this 
organ for some years. She made diligent and minute 
search for some traces of it, but could only find some 
small fragments of the keys, which she has in careful 
keeping. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

WHEN MERIDEN BECAME A CITY. 

/^NE fine morning in July, 1867, Meriden awoke and 
^-^ found itself a city, "armed and equipped as the 
law directs," with mayor, aldermen and councilmen all 
complete. And then Meriden did not know exactly 
what to do next. Now, there existed illustrious prece- 
dent for this state of inertitude. In a two-volume 
record of the early days of Queen Victoria's court, 
written by a person who was a member of the house- 
hold at that time, it is set down that just such a state 
of matters existed then. Nobody knew precisely what 
was expected of them, and the young sovereign, only 
eighteen years old, just about the age of one of our 
pretty High school girls, could not tell them. 

And, therefore, when assembled in the evenings the 
court used its best collective endeavors to refrain from 
yawning the top of its collective head off. For, of 
course, to yawn at court would have been the death of 
the British lion. But there was this difference between 
the Meriden city government and the English court — 
that the former were in no danger of boredom ; things 
were made too lively for them to suffer in that way. 
But, on the other hand, it was like its illustrious proto- 
type in this particular — that while, individually, each 
and every man knew precisely his business and how to 
do it, it was only collectively that a confusion of ideas 
prevailed. 

Our citizens showed more perspicacity; they decided 
it to be their parts and duties to give the new mayor a 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. I57 

reception, and accordingly Mayor Parker's house was 
duly turned upside down. This preliminary settled, 
all hands addressed themselves to business, the city 
corporation doing their best to bring order out of 
chaos, and the citizens to opposing pretty nearly every- 
thing that was undertaken. It did seem rather hope- 
less. The streets were most of them, steep; all of 
them uneven and crooked; and although each individ- 
ual was really desirous for the city's advancement, yet 
each was confident in his (or her) own mind that the 
emendations should begin somewhere else, no matter 
where the much-badgered city corporation began. 

There had been attempts at improvement in former 
times, but the days had long gone by when at certain 
seasons the only safe method of crossing Harbor brook 
to a point several rods east of the wooden bridge was 
by a causeway of boards, built upon poles, with trimmed 
saplings for a railing. Or, when a party of young 
people, who were to attend an evening entertainment 
in the western part of the town, had to alight upon 
some boards at the foot of Linsley's hill while their car- 
riage was pried out of the mud. Or, later still, when 
private enterprise had done something remedial for 
West Main street, the thin layer of crushed rocks 
-would be covered by a quaking mass of mud, resem- 
bling nothing so much as a lake of soft soap, in the 
which, if one lost one's rubber, one was pretty sure to 
fish up somebody else's. 

But, speaking of Linsley's hill— long, long before it 
was Linsley's hill— a little girl was sent with a silver 
fifty -cent coin to a milliner's shoo, the only one in town 
just then, close by the present railroad station on West 
Main street. Strolling amid the grass and clover at 
the side of the road she lost the precious piece of silver, 



158 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN, 

and feeling, as children do, that the skies had fallen 
and life was over, the small maiden went wailing back 
home. Almost, if not quite, half a century after, an 
Irishman digging near the Curtis house unearthed, sev- 
eral feet below the siirface of the ground, a silver fifty- 
cent piece, of a coinage within the first thirty years of 
the century. But, as Kipling says, that's another 
story. 

There had been sidewalks in the past of plank. One 
on Colony street was suggested by, and much of the 
expense borne by, the late Dennis Wilcox. Another, 
of strips of board laid transversely across timbers laid 
lengthwise prone upon the ground and following the 
inequalities, led from a point somewhere east of the 
bridge to a point somewhere near the center of the 
town on the hill. These walks were hailed as a great 
convenience in their early days, but that on East Main 
street soon became a doubtful one. The timbers be- 
came thrown out of line by the frost, and the transverse 
strips of board became disjoined so that finally the 
wayfarer who essayed a walk from the " Corner " up 
the hill was obliged to walk delicately like Agag, the 
careless pedestrian not infrequently finding by the sud- 
den upheaval of a plank the alternative of a standing 
position in the mud on one side, or a sitting one on the 
stone wall on the other. The boys, too, would some- 
times find a piece of board seductively shaped just right 
for a ball club, those adjuncts of civilization being 
mostly homemade in those days 

This sidewalk had the honor of provoking a wiiticibm 
from Henry Ward Beecher, who lectured in the Town 
hall at the period of the sidewalk's most marked dislo- 
cation. Finally, consideration for the lives and limbs 
of the citizens demanded that it be removed altogether; 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 159 

which was done. But this was also of a day that was 
past. 

The town was meanwhile rapidly growing, and was 
outgrowing the town laws, and it was seen that meas- 
ures must be decided upon which should enable the 
place to develop its possibilities. Besides, there had 
come up a tramp and loafer element which was ex- 
tremely difficult to cope with efficiently. Hence the 
city charter and incorporation and the entering of the 
city officials into their labors, which they found per- 
plexing enough. Did they aspire to straightening a 
a street ? At once they were beset by weeping widows 
who could not — and would not, so there ! — see their 
favorite Japan quince bush or dwarf pear tree sacrificed. 
Irate householders declared that nothing and nobody or 
nobodies should compel them to lay flagging in front of 
their premises when they did not want to do so, and 
could not afford it. As for their own property being 
enhanced in value by such enforced disbursement, they 
scorned the idea. The tramps refused to leave town 
till they got ready, and the loafers clung to their be- 
loved street corners. The policemen were desirous of 
doing their duty; but the limits were undefined, and 
they did not know exactly what might happen if they 
exceeded their limitations, so that, finally, all — police- 
men, tramps, and loafers — did as Israel did of old — 
" Every man that which seemed right in his own eyes. " 

Things could not, of course, go on in this way for 
long without coming to a crisis, and a scrimmage be- 
tween the police and the parties of the other part 
resulted in the upholding of the former in the course 
they took by the lovers of good order, and thereafter 
they maintained and retained their control of the law- 
less social element. 



l6o RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

Gradually, too, the crooked paths became straight, 
literally, and the rough places smooth. The inequali- 
ties of Colony street were removed, and one can 
scarcely believe that there was once an elevation from 
Washington street to Foster street that completely 
obstructed the view beyond and north. 

Another street, too, where an indignant housekeeper, 
dish cloth in hand, once put to rout a half dozen lords 
of creation who had been deputed to prepare the ground 
before her front fence for a flagged sidewalk, is now a 
lovely, level, shaded highway, and within the week has 
been pronounced by a swiftly-speeding wheelman ' ' a 
dandy street to ride on." 

Twenty-five years ago St. Andrew's Church was un- 
finisbed. There was no soldiers' monument, and the 
spot which the High school occupies was filled by a row 
of unsightly rookeries. The Town hall was a " reproach 
and a hissing," albeit much improved from the days of 
its remarkable and most exasperating echo that, coming 
from the upper southwest corner of the auditorium, 
would repeat with ludicrous exactness the last two or 
three words of every sentence spoken on the stage. 
This echo was remedied by altering the arch of the 
ceiling. 

In the vanished quarter of a century much has been 
accomplished in the perfecting of plans for beautifying 
a city so beautiful for its situation as this of ours cer- 
tainly is. Much is still desirable to be done, and with- 
out doubt much will in the future be achieved. 

Meriden's successive mayors are all living. The rank 
is at present unbroken. Two of the first four aldermen 
have departed. Eight of the first sixteen councilmen 
have also passed away. In the twenty-five years nearly 
or quite fifty men, prominent in town affairs, either 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. l6l 

socially, professionally or in ecclesiastical matters, have 
moved off the stage of living men and given place to 
others who are as ambitious and as absorbed in the 
issues of the time as were those whom we meet no 
more at home or in the passing crowd. If this younger 
element do the duty of the hour as well as did those of 
whom we now speak in the past, they will not have 
lived in vain. 

And when the city is fifty years old, and the tram 
cars propelled by cable or electricity, or compressed 
air, or something else of which no one has yet heard, 
and are making hourly trips from here to New Haven; 
when West Peak with its lower elevations is a public 
park and the east mountains terraced to their tops are 
built upon; when hospital and public library are and 
have been for years in good working order ; when these 
things have been done, and others now not even 
dreamed of, it will not matter if the names of those 
who were instrumental in the carrying of all these 
things are forgotten of living men, for they will not 
have spent their "labor for that which is not bread." 
They will have done their part in building up a city 
"whose sons shall grow up as young plants," and 
whose ' ' daughters shall be as the polished corners of 
the temple;" in whose streets there shall be "node- 
cay" or "complaining." And the happy people who 
are " in such a case " are those who have the " Lord for 
their God." 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

IN THE EARLY FORTIES — CUSTOMS OF MARRIED LIFE. 

TTALF a century and more ago married life was, as a 
■'• -^ custom, entered upon at an earlier age than is 
now thought advisable. Engagements were not, there- 
fore, prolonged, and were not often announced, never 
formally. It happened very early in the forties that 
thirteen young couples were married within a few 
months. None of them would now be thought in other 
than moderate circumstances — that is, worth, perhaps, 
ten or fifteen thousand dollars; two or three of the 
brides belonged to families of this class. All of them, 
however, had the proper "setting out" — feather beds 
and bed linen, plain and very substantial. Two fortu- 
nate young women had also some ancestral china and 
silver. 

Not much money certainly to start in life with ; but on 
both sides a fund of mutual interests and of very genu- 
ine, even if not of very demonstrative, affection and 
respect for and confidence in each other. And, be- 
sides, an individual self-respect that kept them silent as 
to the trivial discords which will — owing, maybe, to 
"too much love and bad weather " — happen in an un- 
accustomed duet. This reticence was, also, a check 
upon that bane of young married life — injudicious 
interference. 

Married life to them was a copartnership not to be 
entered upon " unadvisedly or lightly," in which mutual 
love and esteem and discretion formed the capital 
stock. Capital stock, everybody knows, is subject to 
fluctuation, but it is not considered to be sound business 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. T63 

methods to throw it away for that reason. And 
thus it fell out that all these thirteen alliances kept 
their integrity " till death did them part." Such part- 
ing came early to two young mothers, who cherished 
their baby sons for a year or two, and were then called 
out of sight. 

The wooing of those days was an enterprise con- 
ducted with a gravity and demure propriety that savored 
of dejection. A request to be "the company home " 
from singing school or evening meeting, or the almost 
equally solemn function of an evening party, was the 
usual preliminary. This being followed up and becom- 
ing noticeable, a meek suggestion that permission to 
call would be a coveted privilege would ensue. This 
permission accorded, matters fell easily into line, but 
an engagement was seldom confessed. 

In fact, persons who prided themselves upon their 
reputation for veracity in other matters did not hesitate 
for a minute in formulating the most barefaced fibs 
when any remarks were made relative to matrimonial 
matters. Such fibbing being considered rather com- 
mendable than otherwise. 

Church weddings were infrequent and, as at present 
conducted, quite unknown. The rite of the Episcopal 
Church was, of course, just the same then as it is 
now, but other clergymen used each his own taste 
and judgment. Even the ritual of the Methodist Church, 
which closely follows the Episcopal marriage service, 
was very seldom used by their ministers. 

Rev. Harvey Miller was very concise in this regard. 
" Are you both agreed?" he would ask; an affirmative 
word by the aspirants; then, "I pronounce you man 
and wife." A cordial handshake brought the brief 
ceremony to a close. 



164 RECOLIECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN 

As to the wedding' habiliments of the era, a stiff, 
white satin stock, upholding a very high and sharp- 
pointed collar, and white kid gloves, gave luster to the 
costume of the groom. For the bride, a light silk, 
plaid or changeable, was the coveted material, 
although white muslin was sometimes but not often 
chosen. 

The gowns of that time, of whatever material com- 
posed, or for whatever use designed, were put together 
with "welting cord" at every seam except upon the 
skirt. Yards of silk or muslin or calico, as it might 
happen, were cut into narrow strips, with which 
the cord was covered, and every "seam, gusset and 
band " was put together with the clumsy addition. 

The first tight sleeves were worn about that time. 
(By the way, they were thought at first scarcely deco- 
rous.) They were worn very tight, and the corded 
seams were most uncomfortable. Sometimes the "welt- 
ing" was covered with a contrasting color. 

One young Cheshire lady, whose wedding dress was 
of light brown silk, had it profusely corded with pink 
silk. In cut and detail, the present styles resemble 
those of fifty years ago ; but there is now more latitude 
in adaptation to the personnel of the wearer than was 
then permitted. Few young women dreamed then of 
having twenty new dresses, with hats to match. 

Bonnets should be said; hats for girls were a most 
improper head covering, for grown people as simply 
impossible. The wedding dress and bonnet were worn 
as the. best church-going costume until circumstances 
made such going — and there was nowhere else to go — 
inconvenient and unsanctioned by public opinion. 

The following is a description of an early Meriden 
wedding, as given in letter written to a friend by Mrs. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 165 

Edgar Munson, formerly of Meriden, now a resident of 
Williamsport, Pa. : 

"The mention of my sister Amelia brings to mind, 
with the other statement, her marriage in 1824. It was 
simplicity itself in comparison, but a sensation at the 
time. It was a morning wedding — not 'high noon.' 
No cards were sent out, these appearing first some 
eight or nine years later. The bride and groom taking 
a wedding trip soon after the ceremony (instead of re- 
maining at home over the first Sunday to ' walk out ' 
— this meaning to appear at church arm in arm) was a 
new feature worthy of discussion. The cut of the 
bridegroom's clothes differed, no doubt, from the pres- 
ent style. The bride was attired in white figured silk, 
with proportions just ample enough in skirt for an easy 
movement of the limbs. The gathers were few in the 
b.ick; the waist about six inches in width, cut low in 
the neck and joined to the skirt about midway between 
the upper part of the chest and the waist line. The 
sleeves were merely a cap, cut in orange quarters and 
filled in with lace, and finished with a white gimp. Four 
or five bands of plush ornamented the skirt. The bride 
wore pink shoes of figured silk, cut low to show her silk 
open work stockings. She wore a coronet around her 
head matching the color of her hair. The Rev. Ashbel 
Baldwin performed the ceremony, bestowing a hearty 
Kiss at the close as his prerogative. The wedding 
feast, to make it satisfactory, required only the ortho- 
dox 'loaf cake,' ornamented with frosting of various 
colors, aided by sugar mites, and something withal to 
make merry with from the overflowing decanters of 
wine from the sideboard. I think at this period no 
' Total Abstinence Society ' had been dreamed of. It 
must have been some eight years later when young 



l66 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGF AND TOWN. 

men and maidens, old men and children, were first 
awakened to obligations to ' sign the pledge.' " 

Some years ago (time goes fast) it chanced that eight 
ladies, whose weddings had occurred about the time we 
are recalling, met in the then parlors of the Uni- 
versalist Church. The ladies of that society were giv- 
ing a series of alphabetical suppers — and very good 
those suppers were. The weather on that particular 
night was stormy, and the eight, who were from the 
several religious sects in the city, had each of them 
thought there would be ' ' nobody there : and it was too 
bad, as everyone counted;" and so there they were. 

After the supper, wedding dresses came into the con- 
versation, and it was found that not one of the eight 
had kept her own wedding dress; some of them had 
been remodeled into best frocks for young daughters. 
Two had furnished lining for dressing gowns for the 
respective heads of families. One of these, prepared 
with infinite secrecy as a birthday present, had the 
sentiment of the occasion marred by the accident of the 
sleeves being sewed in upside down and backside 
front, giving the tentative wearer, who did his very 
best to rise to the situation, the look of a man whose 
arms had suffered dislocation. 

In an old cemetery in the city of Middletown there is, 
or was a few years since, an old brown headstone, set 
there many a year ago, bearing on its time-worn face 

the record: 

To the memory 

" Who was in life 
My own most faithful wife." 

And another in a modern cemetery, cut in a rare and 
costly veined marble : 

" Loved and honored; 
Trusted and true." 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 167 

These two epitaphs might, with absolute truth, be 
written above the last resting-place of every one of 
those thirteen brides of more than half a century ago. 

A few remain here widowed. Yet fewer, husband 
and wife, still walk here, hand in hand, as they started 
in their dual life. But the larger number 

" Home have gone 
And ta'en their wages." 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE soldiers' CAMP AT HANOVER. 

TN the years before and up to the breaking out of the 
•^ war, there was between the two sections of the 
United States a remarkable state of mutual misappre- 
hension. Some of the sympathy for the slave might as 
well have been given to the owners. Let any Northern 
housekeeper select the most idle, insolent, thievish and 
exasperating servant she ever knew or heard of, and 
multiply by a dozen or two, and she will have a faint 
idea of one of the trials of a Southern housekeeper. 
Add the certainty, also, that only by the expedient of 
selling could one be got rid of. But this was the do- 
mestic side, and might have stayed so, but for the 
political turn which affairs had taken. 

The South had gradually secured predominance in the 
government, and when they thought it necessary, 
fought to retain their power, even if the disintegration 
of the Republic were to be the result. The Northern 
men were determined that the Republic should retain 
its structural identity. 

The Southerners were in the habit of assuring the 
world that they represented the chivalry and bravery of 
the country, and the Northerners, without thinking or 
caring much about it, had conceded it. Both seemed to 
have forgotten that in two previous contests with an- 
other power the North had show quite as much com- 
bativeness as the South. 

This paper only proposes to deal with certain events 
of the summer and winter of i86i-'62, in the village of 
Hanover (begging South Meriden's new name pardon). 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 1 69 

One Sunday in the summer of the earlier year a young 
matron was called upon to contribute to the needs of a 
' ' company of soldiers from Vermont who, " she was told, 
" had been three days upon the journey by railroad, and 
had nothing to eat in that time." Without giving a 
thought to the absurdity of the statement, she turned 
over the family Sunday dinner to the supposed famishing 
patients and then started with her own and some neigh- 
bors' children to a point which would give them a view 
of the train on which they would leave town. 

After the cars had gone by she was astounded to see 
the children run down to the railway and gather up 
several parts of loaves of bread which had been thrown 
out by some of the aforesaid starving men. Not until 
then was it really "borne in" upon her mind that if 
the men had walked from Vermont they would hardly 
have taken three days for it, and food was as plenty 
in one place as another. 

She returned home to hear that there had been no 
service in any of the churches, so absorbed was every- 
body in the excitement at the time. It has been told 
over and over again, how in the Revolutionary war men 
"left the plow in the furrow" to join the army. In 
1862 men laid down the hammer, turned the belt from 
the revolving wheel, wiped the pen and closed the desk 
and said, " I am going." But the women only turned 
pale and set their lips, but said no word to dissuade 
them. 

Early in the fall of '6i the news came that a battalion 
of cavalry and artillery were to encamp in Hanover. 
They arrived on the 2 2d of October — a raw, cloudy, 
bleak day that October had picked out of November's 
pocket. 

Probably nobody expected to see a company of 



lyo RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

plumed knights on prancing steeds, yet there was a cer- 
tain sense of flatness when about four in the afternoon 
the cavalry and artillery walked down the dusty road, 
looking anything but exhilarated by the aspect over the 
river of the wide, open, treeless meadow which was to 
be their home for the next three months. Certainly 
the prospect was not inspiring as they passed through 
the village to the ground selected, with nothing like a 
shelter to be seen. The place had, however, been well 
chosen. The soil was very dry and well drained with 
the river and " raceway " on one side, and on the north 
the "island" with a number of magnificent hemlocks, 
besides other forest trees, and the raceway embank- 
ment, which made a not insignificant shelter for the 
stables and tents. But at this time these were in the 
future. 

Arrived on the ground, the scene was changed at 
once. Like magic, tents were set up, fires were built, 
and coffee and soup cooked. Certain amateur, juvenile 
reporters revealed that a cauldron of soup was upset, 
and some of the men " cried; " and small blame if they 
did. The camp being unorganized, the men went 
where they pleased, with the result that some went to 
prayer meeting and others got very drunk, although at 
that time there was not a saloon in the place. The 
next morning found everybody astir and busy, and be- 
fore night the empty meadow of the day before held 
shelter tents, and cook tents, and stables for the horses 
were being rapidly built. Two days after the horses 
arrived in the evening o*f a very rainy day. The boy of 
the period was in great glee and had a magnificent 
time, for it was very dark, and the horses coming on 
the cars, which were much less well planned for in the 
transportation of animals than at present, were wild 



I 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 17I 

with hunger and thirst. They broke away and ran 
about in the rain and darkness, being finally secured 
after an amount of strenuous exertion, which, judging 
from the enthusiasm of the narrators, must have been 
extremely exhilarating. 

The uniforms came, and here again the ubiquitous 
small boy came to his own. There seemed to be no 
method of distribution practicable but to call the roll 
and give each man a uniform, hit or miss, the result 
being, of course, a uniformity of misfits. With the 
usual perversity of such apportionments, the tall man 
found himself provided with abreviated unmentionables 
and jackets to match, while the garments allotted to 
the short man trailed on the ground, and his jacket fol- 
lowed the same perverse rule. By the time the uni- 
forms were all distributed order and discipline were at 
an end, and officers and men fairly rolled on the ground 
with shrieks of laughter that rung beyond the camp 
ground. 

In less than a week everything had settled into 
order. The bugle was heard sounding the reveille, the 
sunrise and sunset gun was regularly fired, and the 
day's work of the camp begun. From the highway the 
boys of the village could overlook the watering of the 
horses at the raceway, and the efforts to subdue a cer- 
tain refractory horse, who would draw a load with all 
the patience in life, but positively refused to be ridden. 
He would stand with a look of meekness unsurpassed 
until the would-be rider was on his back, and then sud- 
denly drawing all four of his feet together, dropping his 
head at the same time, would round up his back and 
land the aspirant for equestrian honors wherever his 
good or bad luck happened to put him. At last a 
soldier, who was an excellent horseman, said he could 



172 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

and would ride him, and be managed not to be thrown, 
but that was all. After a long contest the man gave 
it up, and the horse was generally used as a draft horse, 
although he was a very handsome animal, and very 
intelligent. 

Recruits came in fast, more stables were built, and 
tents were multiplied. The camp became the center of 
attraction for miles around. Omnibusses ran regularly, 
private carriages were going and coming, and the heavy 
camp teams were on the road continually. Twice a day 
the whole battalion was out for drill, and frequently 
made progresses through the town. 

Several times during the winter Governor Bucking- 
ham and his wife visited the camp. Mrs. Buckingham 
was a plain, elderly, motherly-looking lady. She was 
dressed in a plain black silk and cashmere shawl. The 
manners of both were entirely without pretense, but 
had a dignity born of self-respect that ought to have 
been unmistakable. Yet, some time in the eight years 
in which he held the governorship he, with his wife, 
visited some place of resort. Plainly dressed and with- 
out escort, they were coolly received by the landlord 
and his subordinates, neglected at the table, and Mrs. 
Buckingham "looked over" by the lady guests. A 
newcomer recognized them, and his greeting caused 
consternation in the first place, and then an immediate 
mending of manners. But it was too late, and although 
not otherwise noticing the neglect they had experi- 
enced, they refused to spend the night in the house. 

The sojourn of the battalion made a lively and bril- 
liant episode in the social life of the town, but knitting 
socks and mittens and lint scraping took the place now 
given to dancing and cards. Still no one, after all, 
believed in the reality of the war. It was an exciting 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 1 73 

period that would be of short duration, everybody 
thought. Very little snow fell until late in January, 
and the dust raised by the horses settling on the ice, 
made the skating looked to as part of the winter's 
amusement impossible. The soldiers joined in most 
of the village gaieties, which, truth to tell, were not 
excessively extravagant. 

One very pleasant incident seems worth recording. 
The district school was presided over by Robert T. 
Spencer, Miss Lucretia Minor assisting. The standard 
of the school was good, and the scholars excellently 
trained As everything bore the stamp of patriotism, 
Miss Minor adapted a dialogue to the prevailing idea, 
and the scholais gave it in the church. The copy is 
lost, and very little can be recalled. " Uncle Sam " 
bewailed the unruly and un dutiful conduct of his chil- 
dren, and told them their behavior made him " pale as 
death." "Caroline" announced her alienation from 
the family; "Louise Ann did not care," she "had a 
beau regarde; " " Georgiana" declared "they would all 
go with sister Caroline ; " and ' ' Secessia " only ' ' wanted 
to be let alone." 

It was very well done. Adjutant Blakeslee had 
brought a detachment of soldiers to the entertainment, 
and when the dialogue closed by the singing of ' The 
Star Spangled Banner," he gave the signal to rise, 
and the young soldiers joined with the splendid volume 
of sound always produced by the voices of men singing 
in unison. 

Looking down the vista of thirty years the scene comes 
vividly to the recollection. The group of boys and girls 
on the platform, the soldiers in blue, in the prime and 
grace of young manhood — -all of them, soldiers and 
scholars, equally fearless on the threshold of untried life. 



174 RECOLLECTIO}^S OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

Of some it must be written, " they are not," of others 
perhaps it were better if — but God knoweth best. 
And some have gone out into the world, doing their 
work in it, and doing it well. 

Upon the thirteenth of January the artillery left the 
camp, and the sunrise and sunset gun no longer rever- 
berated from the hill. The cavalry remained until 
the twenty-second of February. On that day, a sloppy, 
slushy morning, " boots and saddles " sounded for the 
last time, and the long line of horses and their riders 
turned their faces southward and rode out of sight. 
Some of the horses were sold, the lumber of the camp 
disposed of, and in a day or two scarce a vestige of the 
camp was left. 

Some years after, when the war was over, some 
of the soldiers revisited the spot, or tried to. The river 
no longer ran rapidly, the "island" was under water, its 
great hemlocks were dead and the trunks submerged. 

The lake formed by the setting back of the river 
covered more than half the meadow and all the ground 
where the tents had stood. One can hardly realize 
that there are men and women, fathers and mothers of 
children, who can "only just remember the war," so 
distinctly is it remembered by those who were then in 
the prime of life. The home-coming of the soldiers, 
when at last the long conflict was done, had its own 
pathetic side. 

After one of the more decisive battles, one of the 
anxious wives heard that her husband was reported 
" missing." Try as she might she could get no trace 
of him. Months passed and she gave him up; but 
when the soldiers began to come back, she used to go 
to the station whenever a train came from the South, 
only hoping to hear, possibly, some last word. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 1 75 

One day while waiting she saw an emaciated man in 
the army blue leave the car. As his eye met hers he 
smiled, and only then did she know him, so worn and 
ill he looked. 

"Why," said she, as she told the story to a friend, 
extending her arms as she spoke, "I could have 
taken him on my two hands and carried him 
anywhere." 

They led him home, put him to bed and sent for a 
doctor. As he stood over him, the physician raised his 
hands; they trembled as did his voice as he said over 
and over, " How did he get home ?" 

After that first recognition he really never knew any 
of his family again. All those missing months he had 
been a prisoner, and when at last he was free, he had 
but one thought — to reach if he could once more those 
faithful arms which he knew would not fail him. So 
with all his might he kept his poor wits together until 
at last he met the look he had so longed for, and then 
he gave up the struggle. He only lived a week, and 
all that time he was living that terrible life of the prison 
over again, seeming, most of the time, to be fighting 
for bread. And when the end mercifully came, his 
wife said the only feeling she was conscious of at first 
was thankfulness that the agony was over. 

Year by year as Memorial day comes around new 
graves are added to the already long list of departed 
soldiers. The village church, whose walls gave back 
the voices of soldiers and children, has been silent 
many a day. The voices which sounded there once 
will be heard there no more. But in the days of which 
a glimpse has been attempted it was vocal with the 
echoes of serious thought. In its pulpit the pastor, 
afterwards Chaplain Jacob Eaton, stood, as with a 



176 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

solemnity born of conviction, he, after having spoken 
long and earnestly, concluded with the words: 

"My brethren, I must go." 

And he went, and came back as did many others — 
with folded hands and closed eyes. 



w 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE MARKET. 

HEN the center of the town was first known as the 
*' Market," no one now living can tell us. Nor 
does any one know when what is now the business 
center was first called the "Corner." This locality- 
bore the name certainly much more than a century 
ago, and bids fair to retain it for a century to come. 

The "Market," although it is a later title, is now 
almost forgotten and quite unheard of by our younger 
citizens. Elderly people — now " gone beyond" — have 
told the elderly people 'of to-day of the ' ' wide green 
yard " to the east and south of the old tavern, of the 
"row of poplars in front," and of the roads, with 
" grass growing between the wheel tracks," leading to 
and from it. Upon this green, on training days and at 
"'lection time," and when a "vendue" (auction) was 
held, pies and gingerbread, doughnuts and molasses 
candy, with metheglin made of honey, and sweet (more 
or less) cider to wash them down, were for sale; for 
the thrifty housekeeper did not disdain thus to turn an 
honest penny. The farmers from Kensington and Ber- 
lin, and from Cheshire street, for this last was a rather 
populous locality then, and had a tavern and a store of 
its own (this property was held in the Miles family for 
more than a century) came " down " or " over," as it 
might chance, and halted for rest and refreshment at 
the tavern bar, as they sought a better road to New 
Haven, and better prices for their produce than could 
be had nearer home. Preferably New Haven, for, as 



178 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

they were wont to explain, "it was uphill all the way 
to Hartford." 

Here, too, rested over night the long "strings of 
horses," driven down from "up the country " on their 
way to the seaboard, whence they were to be shipped 
to the West Indies. These were occasions of interest 
and excitement. Horse trades were not infrequent; 
bargain and barter were entered into with boisterous 
energy, and artful sagacihy and astuteness. To the 
"Market" the farmers from "over east" or from 
"over west" drove their grass-fed, corn-fattened 
stock, to be bargained for and bought by the butcher, 
for there was in the thirties only one in Meriden. He 
drove around once a week, and his provisions were 
often engaged in advance. Later, in 1840, for instance, 
there were two butchers, and fresh beef could be had 
twice each week. 

The arrival and departure of the stages were events 
of interest and wild excitement. These brought the 
weekly papers, the New Haven Palladium and Register, 
the Hartford Times and the Courant, with its fort- 
nightly supplement. Often, too, glimpses could be 
had of notable men — women did not count for much in 
those days — as the stages delayed for dinner at the old 
tavern. 

The people living at the east side of Meriden came 
"over to the Market;" from the north they "went 
down " to the Market. From "the Farms " and from 
Hanover they came "up to the Corner" and "up to 
the Market," and from the Foundry over west, from 
the "Coefarm," from the "Rice farm," overflowing 
then with young lives, the world all before them, from 
the Andrews, the Johnsons and the Merriams, they 
came "over to the Corner" and "up to the Market." 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 1 79 

To the latter more usually to do their trading. For 
" Birdsey's store" was the larger of the two then 
in Meriden, and had by far the most varied and best 
stock. Here, also, was the only milliner in the place 
for some years, Mrs. Ann E. Merriam, a woman for 
whose sake one must take back the remark, that women 
were not of much account, for she deserved, no one 
better, the name of "A Brave Lady." 

When she fully realized the heavy weight she must 
carry all her days, she took up the burden with a noble 
dignity, suffering in silence. Asking for no sympathy, 
and, therefore, seldom comforted by any, she gave to 
others out of her own heart so abundantly that many, 
when she departed, rose up and called her blessed. 

Upon town meeting days the voters all came to the 
Market, for the Congregational Church basement was 
the town hall for the occasion, and the tavern bar- 
room did a thriving business. When the town attained 
to the dignity of having a real post-office of its own, the 
location was in the brick store of Eli Birdsey, at the 
southeast corner of East Main street, or in the building 
owned by Ira N. Yale, next south of the old bank, 
never farther away. Here tor a good many years — I 
think more than twenty — Hiram Hall retained his 
place as postmaster. No matter which political party, 
was in the ascendant, he kept his position. The reasons 
given were that he was a "good fellow," "everybody 
liked him," and "he ought to have it, as he could not 
work hard with his bad side." This diseased side 
finally caused his death. 

The market was a rather undefined space, and what- 
ever of interest took place within several rods of the 
tavern everybody went to the Market to see what was 
going on. 



ibO RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

The eccentric itinerant preacher, Lorenzo Dow, 
once at least, perhaps twice, preached on the green. 
He is almost forgotten now, but was a notable charac- 
ter in his day. He used to appear in places distant 
from each other, and, if he thought the field a promis- 
ing one, would, at the close of his preaching, give out 
that at a certain time, often a year distant, he would be 
there again upon a fixed day and hour, and, sure 
enough, he would keep his appointment. I think the 
aged lady who was my informant said that in this in- 
stance he failed to appear at the time set, and it was 
ascertained that he died on one of his journeys. 

Just here, too, was the only shoe store in town. 
Very little, if any, ready-made stock was kept, but it 
was the place — "John Butler's shoe shop" — where 
every foot in town was measured for cowhide, calfskin, 
morocco or prunella shoes, all made upon honor, if not 
with great elegance of workmanship. (His tannery 
was at the northwest corner of Broad and Liberty 
streets.) Here, too, were sold the first rubber shoes 
in Meriden. Ver)^ clumsy things were those rub- 
bers. They were "warranted not to leak or turn 
red." I do not think they did, either, but what was 
by way of a name called the sole of the rubber, 
had a way of spreading and bulging in the wear- 
ing that made them look much more like rubber bags 
than any sort of footgear. The rubber itself in a 
semi-liquid state was run upon a wooden mold or 
shapeless last, and the shoes had no more real sole 
than there is to a stocking foot — not so much, in fact. 

At the Market the band played occasionally, for there 
was a very good one in Meriden even in those early 
days. Mr. Edwin Yale Bull, of Yalesville was a 
member of it, and is still living; as, I think, are one 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. lOI 

or two others. Here, too, the yearly ball games 
were played. I believe this was called town ball. 
In this game those who took part stood on each side 
of and close to the roadway, while the players per- 
formed a sort of country dance down the middle. 
Here, also, the men employed in making the high-top 
carved back combs, so fashionable in the thirties, in 
the red shops a little way west of the tavern, played 
their diurnal game of quoits. I do not think they ever 
missed, in decent weather, playing a game in the 
middle of the day before resuming work for the after- 
noon. 

The Market was the scene of the abolition riot in 
1837. An accurate and concise account of the affair is 
given by Dr. C. H. S. Davis in his history. What 
very few people ever knew was the romance that grew 
out of that episode. The Thompson brothers were 
brought into town especially to assist in the riot. One 
of them had seen and become very much in love with a 
young woman belonging to one of the prominent 
Meriden families. The writer remembers him, con- 
spicuous in an expansive red waistcoat, sitting in the 
south gallery of the old Episcopal Church (the only oc- 
cupant at the time), with enamored gaze fixed steadily 
on his lady love, who sat, conscious, on the north side 
down stairs. The affair was not smiled upon by any of 
the friends of the young woman saving one old maid, 
who, having had an undeveloped love story in her own 
youth, sympathized with the pair in their difficulties. 
Mainly through her help they were married, and soon 
left for the West, where they were, when heard from, 
living happily. But that was sixty years ago. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

JOHN D. POST. 

A BOUT 1840 John D. Post started a school in Meri- 
***• den. Although it was called ''The Academy," 
I think the enterprise was his own. It was a boarding 
school in a small way, and had a fair patronage from 
other towns in the state. The "Academy" was a 
plain, very plain, two-story structure on the high 
ground south of East Main street and east of Elm 
street. An oak tree marked — and perhaps does now — 
the exact location. A steep, ungraded path led up to 
it. In the winter this made one of the finest of sliding 
places. A long board was the accepted means of 
transit, and a standing position thereon the most de- 
lightfully fraught with peril. The felicity of rush- 
ing into jeopardy and stopping at the brink of a 
crisis is only experienced by ^^outh with all life's real 
hazards in the future. 

Mrs. John T. Pettee tells that once taking one of these 
rapturous standing slides, the velocity made it certain 
that nothing could save them from going over the 
bank. What shall we do? was the question. "Jump!" 
promptly answered Miss Marietta; which they did, 
landing unhurt in a snowdrift six feet in depth. 

Mr. Post was progressive in his methods. He had a 
small battery for experiments in electricity. The appa- 
ratus was kept in a little cupboard back of the teachers' 
platform. To this the scholars had free access, and the 
older ones amused themselves with its effects, of course 
with very crude ideas and little understanding of its 
laws. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 183 

One day a circuit was formed, and a delicate young 
girl, who held the hands of two stalwart young men, 
received such a charge that she was made seriously ill. 

Mr. Post made us happy with some very successful 
school entertainments, The Congregational Church 
was lent for the purpose. A platform was built in 
front of the pulpit, and a most delightful rendition of 
Dickens' Dotheboy's Hall ("Nicholas Nickleby ") and 
from "Oliver Twist " were given. All the parts were 
taken by boys. A year after this, another of two suc- 
cessive days was given; this also took place in the 
church. 

A famous (in that day) debate in Congress upon the 
abolition question, or some phase of it, was reproduced. 
The action of this was on the floor of the church, with 
a Speaker of the House, tellers and pages, all complete 
as possible. Daniel Webster, Stephen Douglas and 
the rest of the congressional big guns were copied or 
counterfeited more or less like the distinguished orig- 
inals. Persons who were in a position to know declared 
it all excellently done. An orchestra was, hired from 
Hartford, and the eclat of the affair was enhanced in 
that the leader named, I think. King, brought with him 
his silver cornet, presented him by admiring friends. 
This was for some years the most noticeable event of 
the kind among us. After Mr. Post had left town the 
academy changed owners as well as principals; one or 
two of the latter were eccentric in character and erratic 
in their method of conducting the school. It lost its 
early prestige, and was finally burned to the ground. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

EARLY STOVES AND THE SEWING MACHINE. 

OY 1830 the severe plainness of early housekeeping 
*-^ began to be mitigated. In a few houses "sale" 
carpets had taken the place of home-made carpets, that 
had taken the place "of sanded floors. Mould candles on 
high festivals, such as the meeting's of the sewing so- 
ciety, for instance, were used instead of the tallow dips, 
and the japanned snuffer tray, with the polished steel 
snuffers, were reflected from the waxed surface of the 
table in the "spare room." About 1830 the open 
Franklin stove was prominent in the furnishing of well- 
to-do " front rooms." This stove, with its brass fender 
and brass andirons, with its brass-bound urn and brass 
knobs and ornaments, put wherever a place could be 
found for such embellishment, was, with its bright 
wood fire, a very cheerful adjunct to an apartment. 
But the keeping of all that brass work specklessly bril- 
liant called for incessant care and constant labor. 
This fell upon some one inember of the family, whose 
business it became to go over all that brass with salt 
and vinegar first, and then to polish with whiting. 
Later, oxalic acid made the work easier. Two or three 
times each week the work had to be thoroughly done, 
besides a daily siiperficial rubbing. Three or four 
houses in town had large, clumsy brass locks affixed 
to the doors; these also had to be duly polished. 
About 1834 the " Rotary " stove made its appearance 
as a kitchen "improvement." These stoves deserve a 
few words. They had no ovens; the place for the fuel 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 1 85 

was a narrow box. Any excess of heat or overflow 
was checked by a turn of the crank, which caused the 
top of the stove to move in any direction required. 
This would remove the viand away from the fire, and 
thus, of course, put a stop to any culinary action; so 
that very nice management was needed to preserve the 
balance of power. The crank, too, with the "total de- 
pravity of inanimate things," had a trick of becoming 
useless, and the tongs had to take its place as the 
means of propulsion. The rotary stove, although one 
of the " improvements " of the time, went out finally 
when coal came in with the railroad. In these last 
months of the century coal is rapidly giving way to 
gas, which will soon in its turn be superseded by elec- 
tricity for culinary purposes, as it already has been for 
heat and light In those former times the anxious 
mother taught her eight or nine years old daughter to 
knit. All the " every day " stockings worn by a family 
were knitted of homespun woolen yarn or cotton. 
The well conducted little girl usually did her stint of 
a certain number of "rounds." When she could "set 
a heel" smoothly, and "toe off" a pair of hose prop- 
erl}^, the work was shown with as much pride and 
pleasure as the fond and proud mother of to-day ex- 
hibits in her small daughter's music or drawing. At 
twelve the young girl was proficient in the "digging 
and ploughing" of cambric, miscalled "hemming." 
At sixteen the maiden, properly taught, stitched her 
father's and brothers' shirt bosoms, collars and wrist- 
bands, taking up, with exactness, upon her needle 
four threads, two forward, two back. Nor was she 
thought fitted for marriage unless she could, unaided, 
cut out and make a shirt. 

The advent of the perfected sewing machine brought 



l86 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

many changes. Factories for making men's garments 
came rapidly into existence. Here I am reminded of 
the "Dayton sisters," two maiden ladies who, armed 
with shears.and tailor's goose, went about from house 
to house, often engaged months beforehand, the only 
makers and repairers of men's garments in town until 
1828. In that year Lewis Greene opened a tailor's 
shop where the First National Bank now stands. He 
bought the land, a lot large enough for a dwelling 
house and a generous garden, besides the shop upon it, 
for not more than three hundred dollars (I think I rec- 
ollect being told two hundred) of Major E. A. Cowles, 
giving his note. I think the method of payment must 
have been unique, for "as fast as he (Lewis Greene) 
earned a few dollars — sometimes only one or two — he 
paid them to Mr. Cowles, who would give him credit 
on the note for them, and reduce the interest in accord- 
ance." Mr. Green was the first and, for a good many 
years, the only tailor in town. The sewing machines, 
for they multiplied rapidly, did much to relieve the 
weary tedium of women's work. Yet it was true, as 
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe once observed, "That the 
more obvious effect was that women put seventy-five 
tucks where they previously put only fifteen." 

There is now a renewal of interest in hand-sewing 
upon delicate materials. In truth, fine, plain sewing 
and embroidery done by hand have a grace and finish 
lacking in the best production of any machine. Some- 
thing of individuality goes into it. Knitting, too, for a 
while a lost art, is being revived. Great, also, are the 
changes in the housekeeping. Does the housekeeper 
aspire to be past mistress in economy, and finds that 
soap is a formidable item of expense — lo ! a neat pack- 
age of alkali and a gallon of water does all and more 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 187 

than the ancient ash-leach and six weeks toil ever did. 
Nor does she with bleeding and abraded hands scour 
twice each year, with soft soap and sand, the tinware, 
which lasted through one generation, and then, mended, 
half through the next. She finds the modern tinware 
is not planned for such heroic treatment, so she hies to 
the five cent store, replenishes her stock and saves her 
hands. 

Thanksgiving preparations no longer include the 
making of the winter store of pies, to be frozen and 
brought into use when wanted. In 1842 a young girl, 
sixteen years old, the daughter of a wealthy farmer, 
made sixty pies in one day, heating the brick oven for 
the purpose. It is only fair to add that the erstwhile 
young pie maker is now, although past seventy years, 
a graceful and elegant woman, fully up to all the 
modern literature and current events of the day. 

Only here and there are to be found, in their old 
places, the plain, low-roofed dwellings common in the 
first half of the century. Comfortable and plain houses 
were they, and nearly uniform in exterior proportion 
and interior plan. Sound in timber, they have been 
moved and many of them modernized. Their places 
are taken by new and handsome dwellings, worthy the 
title of mansions, with "modern improvements." 

The old-fashioned dooryards, overrun with red and 
white roses and June pinks, are no more. They have 
given place to smooth green turf and vases of classic 
model, from which are shed petals and colored foliage 
grown from stock brought from lands beyond the once 
mysterious Eastern seas. The Town Hall and the 
High school stand where once the wide, straight garden 
paths defined the generous garden beds, in which suc- 
culent vegetables grew sociably side by side with glow- 



160 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

ing tulips and peonies, lilies and tall, pale rockets. 
The broad beds of herbs, burnet (hot, biting and 
spicy), sweet clover and thyme, saffron and sage, the 
long rows of red and white currants, with now and 
then a bush of black currants, are now 

" Only pictures that hang upon memory's walls." 

I think few places can be so blossomy with wild flowers 
and so fertile in wild fruit as was, in that old time, 
what is now the heart and center of the city. In 1845 
all, or nearly all, of. the country between Broad and 
Colony streets was a rustic wilderness, traversed only 
occasionally by some one who wished to take a shorter 
route than the road between Clarksville to the Market, 
or from Prattsville to the Corner. More than once or 
twice in the forties a large animal, supposed to be a 
wild cat from the mountains, was seen by persons thus 
crossing. In the spring of 1845, while walking with 
my husband near where now Warren street joins Camp 
street, we came suddenly upon a m^other quail sitting 
on her nest. So quiet had been our approach that she 
was not disturbed, and we left her there. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

ECCENTRIC CHARACTERS. 

f~\P the persons who form the class called " charac- 
^^ ters," we now see few or none. In the earlier 
years of the town there used to be several whose advent 
upon the street was noticeable, and whose round of 
visits varied the monotony of housewifery toils. Per- 
haps in the hurry and bustle of these latter days we 
fail to observe the salient traits. 

Old Amos Austin, who lived in the southern side of 
the town, believed himself to be possessed of occult 
insight. He believed his house haunted by witches. 
These he rigorously kept in abeyance by the fumes of a 
pungent lye of his own concoction. 

''The vile odors from his chimney were probably 
more effective to the neighbors than to the witches. " 

His two daughters, Emily and Phebe, were also well 
known eccentrics. They lived to a great age, and died 
at the town farm not many years ago. 

Amos Austin's brother, Caleb Austin, was laughed 
at and nicknamed the "prophet," from his prediction 
that his farm and homestead would be laid out in " town 
lots, and be worth as much as two thousand dollars. " 
This property of his lay just at the foot of Olive street. 
There was an enclosed lane or court opening off South 
Colony street. In it were two houses — one large and 
old-fashioned, the other small, low and equally old. 
Caleb owned them both. It was called by the old 
people of 1835 the "old Atwater place." To the old 
people of to-day it has seemed a mistake that Olive 



igo RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

Street should not have been named after the old 
" place." 

Caleb was a man of large frame, and would have been 
tall if he had not been so bowed down as to seem almost 
humpbacked. He went about carrying a tin trunk, 
from which he peddled "notions." His business 
method was a peculiar one. He once refused to sell 
one of the two darning needles he had in stock, as, he 
said, by thus selling he would only "break up his 
assortment." He lived to realize his two thousand 
dollars. 

The larger house was torn down many years ago ; the 
smaller house, with land adjoining, was bought by Mr, 
E. O. Roberts about forty years ago for three hundred 
and seventy-five dollars. 

Mrs. Edgar Munson, of Williamsport, Pa. , who was 
Miss Lucy Maria Curtis, of Curtis street, writes that 
"Caleb Austin's threatening ' tarnal ruin' to the im- 
penitent and Joab Hall's thunderous appeals to the 
same were a great stimulus to the attendance under the 
low roof of the old Baptist basement of the boys, who 
sought amusement rather than grace." 

Another familiar figure was "Beck" Williams, who 
periodically left her home in a neighboring hamlet and 
trailed around town, clad, even in winter, in a thin 
cotton gown. She went about from house to house re- 
tailing gossip and settmg neighbors by the ears; be- 
tween times railing spitefully against two of her own 
relatives, whom she, supposing herself to be quoting 
Scripture, piously spoke of as " Bell and the dragon." 
Poor Beck Williams was at last found dead in the fields 
near the East mountain, 

A foreigner in town was in those days rarely seen. 
One, a Spaniard, John Antiwine (Antoine?), lived near 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. I9I 

the Wallingford line. He, with his wife and dog, took 
long daily walks up and down the turnpike. The wife 
owned the alliterative and rhymthical "front " names: 
*' Caroline Catharine 
Christiana Antiwine." 

These names the small boys of sixty years ago used, 
upon the appearance of the trio, to chant more or less 
in unison. 

Antiwine's nearest neighbor was the " Widow Clark." 
She kept the toll gate between Meriden and Walling- 
ford. Her time was fully occupied in keeping a sharp 
lookout for the "ninepences" and "four-pen-hap- 
pences," and an occasional '•quarter-dollar" for a 
"four -horse -team," She never allowed either to 
escape her if she could help it, and vigilance was need- 
ful, for to "run the gate " was thought a very audacious 
and funny exploit by the boys. 

"Old Cabin" was another oddity, who used to limp 
up and down the turnpike "not always on the even 
tenor of his way." His limp was caused by a sprained 
ankle, which Dr. Hough mercilessly jerked into place, 
disregarding the shrieks of "an old liar who ought to 
be hurt." 

Erastus Evans, who came from and went no one 
knew whither, was for years a feature on the street, as 
he twice each day went to the old tavern for his diur- 
nal dram. It was said that by going into the water his 
right leg was drawn up into a right angle with the 
thigh. With the right knee in a rest to keep it from 
the ground, and a wooden block in each hand to protect 
them also, he got over the ground in nearly a sitting 
position, seldom speaking and never complaining. 

Dr. Arza Andrews was another noticeable individual. 
He was a man of much learning and skill, but he could 



192 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

not always be induced to apply either. He and his tall 
stately wife used to ride about in his sulky, both of 
them on the one narrow seat, he bending forward to 
urge, by slaps with a shingle which he carried for the 
purpose, his Rosinante to a quicker step, the animal 
meanwhile keeping unmoved its usual calm aspect and 
funeral pace. 

One is reminded of the widow of Esquire William 
Yale, whose homestead at Broad street is still in excel- 
lent preservation. "Widow Bill," as she was called, 
was thought eccentric and unfeminine for driving about 
with her own horse and gig. She and her gray horse 
' ' Rochelle " were noticeable. She was only ahead of her 
time so far as driving went. She was also fond of litiga- 
tion. Once, however, impatient of the law's slow pro- 
cess, she brought temporary defeat to her opponent by 
a volley of eggs, which she had saved until their age 
made them the more fit for her purpose. 

In spite of her eccentricities she was a brilliant 
woman. She remained personally attractive until 
quite aged. 

A tramp woman with two children used to pass 
yearly through the town in the spring, following the 
turnpike south. The children, a boy and a girl, were 
at first quite small. They have probably helped to 
swell the criminal classes. On their last visit at a 
house, where they were regaled with a lunch, a gold 
ring of some value disappeared with them. The chil- 
dren were then apparently about fourteen years old. 
There were, also, men of marked character of a differ- 
ent type than these who have been mentioned. 

Colonel Seymour, "Uncle" Ben Upson, Captain 
Collins, and Dr. Hough were men who were not com- 
pelled to exert themselves, and therefore did not. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 193 

Still, in these electrical times men of greater age than 
any of them are only happy in active business. Dr. 
Hough, though, employed part of his leisure hours in 
the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties. He used 
to tell with laughter of one rebuff he met with. Driv- 
ing up Broad street, he noticed at a spring on the left 
hand (this spring was just west of the residence of 
A. S. Thomas and Mrs. Russell) a man washing some 
of his underclothing. 

"What are you doing?" asked the bluff doctor, in 
his usual peremptory tone. 

" Minding my own business," was the concise 
answer. 

Events, which now only make a brief newspaper item, 
weie then a town sensation, talked over for months. 
Such was the burning of the lonely farmhouse on the 
" Scovill farm," lying high upon the southern slope of 
the East mountain (Berlin). Mrs. Scovill was a widow 
and a notable housekeeper, with a store of house linen 
of her own spinning and weaving. She had whole 
pieces of home-made flannel, and carpets (home-made), 
colored with yellow oak bark, sumach berries, and the 
indigo weed and sweet fern, for she was expert in such 
matters. Her imbecile son set fire to the dwelling, and 
all these household treasures were reduced to dust and 
ashes. Asked why he did such a thing, the boy said 
"he wanted to go West, and his mother said she could 
not leave her house." 

Another event was the finding, by some sportsmen, 
the dead body of Betsy Todd, one of the town poor, 
who occasionally wandered into town. She lost her 
way and fell off or down the " Berlin " or East moun- 
tain. She had not been long dead when the hunters 
found her. 

13 



194 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

Sundry comparatively modern versions of the origin 
of " Mt. Lamentation" have been current at different 
times. But the story told by the old people of sixty 
years ago was, that a hundred years ago, or more, per- 
haps, a " Wallingford man " was missed from his home 
and never after heard from. A few years later a skele- 
ton was found on the mountain, and it was thought to 
be the remains of the missing man. 

The greatest sensation of the time and hour was the 
hanging of a townsman, Peter Lung, for the murder of 
his wife. "Young and old flocked from Meriden to 
Middletown to witness the hanging." Dr. Hough and 
some of the family started to go, but were so overcome 
by horror at the thought of it that they, ' ' when they had 
got over so far as the gate, turned • around and came 
home again." 

Peter was never in his life of so much importance as 
at his leaving it Eleven or twelve thousand persons 
witnessed his execution. It is on record that he was 
"unmoved by the presence of the crowd and by the 
military parade." On the morning of his execution 
service was held in the Congregational church in 
Middletown, and Peter, sitting in the front pew, listened 
to his own funeral sermon, preached by the Rev. David 
Dudley Field, of Haddam, Conn., father of the famous 
brothers of that name. The sermon preached on the oc- 
casion was printed, and the pamphlet is in the posses- 
sion of Mrs. Jane Coe Clark of Hingham, Mass. The text 
was from Luke xxii : 34 : " And take heed to yourselves, 
lest at any time your hearts be surcharged with sur- 
feiting and drunkenness and cares of this life, and so 
that day come upon you unawares." 

The sermon concludes thus: 

" May God save us all from sin and misery. May 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 1 95 

He have mercy on him who is about to die ; and may 
the Lord Jesus Christ remember us all when we shall 
come into his kingdom. Amen." 

The pamphlet is entitled: "Sermon against drunk- 
enness, preached the day of the execution of Peter 
Lung for the murder of his wife." 

The title page has also a text : 

" Ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a mur- 
derer which is guilty of death, but he shall surely be 
put to death; for blood it defileth the land, and the 
land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein 
but by the blood of him that shed it." — Numbers 
XXXV : 31-33. 

The sermon is a strong temperance appeal, as the 
murder was committed under the influence of liquor. 
It is a pamphlet of twenty-eight pages in all, six of 
which are given up to a " Sketch of Life and Hopeful 
Repentance of Peter Lung." "Printed by Seth Rich- 
ards, and published at the request of gentlemen in the 
city of Middletown, July 20, 1816. Sermon delivered by 
David D. Field, of Haddam, Conn." 

The sapient remarks with which the sketch of Peter's 
life concludes partakes of the humorous; thus: 

"At the public religious exercise of the day he 
manifested resignation and composure, and afterward 
expressed his approbation of the sentiments which had 
been delivered." 

He had but little time to bring forth fruits meet for 
repentance. His circumstances were very unusal. A 
note at the bottom of the page informs us that ' ' how he 
would have lived had he been reprieved is unknown." 

On his last morning he was unmoved by the military 
parade and the multitude, amounting, it was supposed, 
to eleven or twelve thousand persons, who assembled to 
witness the execution. 



196 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

To the list of odd characters once in Meriden the 
name of Chauncy Hall should be added. He lived in a 
little house on the road to Westfield. He was an in- 
ventor, or tried to be one. He went by the name of 
" Quizzy." Sixty years ago he conceived the notion of 
"stone shingles." About that time, too, he invented 
a wire fence, and actually enclosed a piece of land in 
that way, using common wire for the purpose. He 
also tried feeding silkworms on oak leaves. So san- 
guine was he, that he prophesied such plenty and cheap- 
ness of the material "that every servant girl would 
have a silk dress." Silk gowns are plenty and cheap 
in these days, and so are wire fences and tiled roofs, 
but poor " Quizzy 's " ingenuity has not brought the 
result. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

MANUFACTURE OF TINWARE. 

/"^HIEF among the old industries of Meriden was the 
^^ manufacture of tinware. "Uncle " Sam Yale had 
several small shops scattered about on Liberty street 
and more at Wall and Broad streets. Here also were 
the extensive barns belonging to his farm. 

Esquire William Yale had a large shop at 465 Broad 
street (where Mrs. Frank Foster's house stands); Ed- 
win Yale had large shops on South Charles street; 
Goodrich & Rutty did a large business on South Broad 
street, below Ann. One of the largest and oldest of all 
was that of Esquire Noah Pomeroy, "over east." 
Nearly, if not quite as large and as old, was that of 
Esquire Patrick Clark at Clarksville, on North Colony 
street. In 1840, this was moved to the corner and — 
for that period — a large two-story building took the 
place of the numerous small shops on the old site. Some 
years later it became the Meriden Savings Bank, Ed- 
win Curtis, President. Later still it went through an- 
other transformation. The building was cut into two; 
part of it is on Veteran street. 

The working force of the tinware trade were journey- 
men and apprentices. The latter had a good deal to 
learn before they could attain to the dignity of the 
former. The making of tinware, as it was in those 
days, is now a lost art. Fifteen separate processes were 
thought necessary before even a pint basin was ready 
for the market. Each article was in several parts, care- 
fully proportioned, and cut out from patterns by the 



198 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

great shears. Nobody dreamed then of making all 
sorts of tin things by simply dropping a great lump of 
iron onto a sheet of tin — and a thin one at that. The 
stock used was in sheets, ten by fourteen inches. This 
was brought from Albany to New Haven by the old 
sloop "Tantivy." From New Haven it was brought 
to Meriden by Joseph Hough, who did a regular car- 
rier's trade for a great many years between the two 
places. Mr. Bull says that in the thirties a storm of 
eighteen days' duration prevented the sloop from com- 
ing into the harbor, and for a few days Hough made 
money by bringing up flour from New Haven and get- 
ting fourteen dollars per barrel for it in Meriden. His 
harvest was a short one. 

The young men employed in the various tin shops 
made a large contingent in the younger population of 
the town. It was remarked when, on one occasion, the 
men's gallery at the Baptist church was unusually well 
filled, that every man or boy there was in the tin busi- 
ness in some capacity. The apprentices were from re- 
spectable, often well-to-do families. They were boarded 
either in the family of the principal or in some other 
where they would be carefully looked after. 

There were not so many temptations for the mislead- 
ing of youth as there are now. The young men were, 
most of them, well principled and of moral rectitude. 
All were intelligent and as well educated as any men 
out of the professions. They were freely admitted into 
the best society of the town and welcomed in the several 
church choirs. One John Phelps had a tenor voice so 
esteemed that the Baptist church paid him a dollar on 
Sunday — not fifty-two dollars per year — bargaining was 
closely done in those days. A little bit of Meriden ro- 
mance is connected with his name. He was a general 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. I99 

favorite, but had made himself particularly agreeable 
to an eccentric maiden lady old enough to be his 
mother. After he left town she followed him, and sought 
for him in vain. Sometimes she found, or fancied she 
did, some trace of him. She spent much time and 
money in her search, during which she traversed nearly 
the whole of the State of New York. After a number 
of months thus spent she came back, by that time 
known to be insane, as she probably was when she left 
home. She remained quietly and happily interested in 
her own fancies until her death at an advanced age. 

After leaving town John Phelps was never again 
heard from by any one here. 

Specimens of japanned and gilded tinware made here 
seventy years ago may still be seen. A spice box, 
given by Edwin Curtis to his wife as a Christmas pres- 
ent, made especially to his order for the purpose, is in 
use still. There seems no reason why it should not last 
for another hundred years. 

From about 1840 the value of the local tinware busi- 
ness declined. Of the old shops, once so numerous and 
so full of life and activity, not a building now remains, 
Fifty years ago, in proportion to the population, the 
trade was as important to the interests of the town as 
any of the large enterprises are now to the city. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

SEWING SOCIETIES. 

A mong the " old friends with new faces " the old sew- 
'**^ ing societies are worth recalling. The three 
churches had each its own, kept exclusively to itself, 
but the method and management were alike in all. 
They met at the houses of the members; wide was the 
range, but the greater the distance the more enthusiastic 
the zeal. 

Once every fortnight an announcement from the pul- 
pit told all concerned that the "sewing society would 
meet at the house of Mrs. Blank." This the younger 
members of the family would not for the world miss 
hearing. They felt that they were for the time being 
public characters, the observed of their comrades. Very 
strenuous rules were made and tolerably well kept — 
as to the providing. Bread (this meant biscuit, mixed 
with cream, light and hot), butter, of course, home- 
dried beef or preserves — not both at one time — pickles 
were always allowed, cake was prohibited. The next 
meeting place fixed upon and the day approaching, the 
sacred front room was opened, swept and garnished. 
This meant a rubbing and dusting, over and under and 
all about every conceivable thing in the room, already 
spotless in its purity. The brass andirons had an extra 
polish, the wood selected and laid ready to light at the 
precise hour, for warmth, with, at the same time, no 
unnecessary use of fuel. The conical loaf of glittering, 
white sugar in its blue wrapping, produced from the 
cupboard, sacred to the keeping of delicacies. The cut- 
ting of this into lumps of a proper size was a task much 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 20I 

coveted by the young members of the family. The best 
table linen and china ascertained to be speckless and 
flawless, the children lectured and exhorted, under 
penalties, to decent behavior, and as much fuss as pos- 
sible made, the preparations were complete. 

It was the duty of the last " entertainer " to send the 
bag or basket, — both, when work was plenty or press- 
ing, to the next place. The contents were : first, as of 
most importance, shirts in process of making, usually 
for the minister; false bosoms and collars to be made up 
and stitched by skilful fingers, and ordered by some 
one desirous of helping the society; skeins of woolen 
yarn to be knitted into socks, almost always for the 
minister; but sometimes to be fashioned into stockings 
ordered by some overdriven housekeeper for her family. 
In the "society bag " would be also certain square or 
diamond shaped pieces of calico to be pieced into 
"blocks "or "stars" for bedquilts. Added to these, 
if a projected fair was on the tapis, would be pieces of 
wedding dresses, donated to the society for making 
(horrible to relate) into kettle holders or pinballs; 
goose quills to be wound with silk and made into tooth- 
picks; tissue and lace papers that had been carefully 
hoarded for some such contingency, and other materials 
for the manufacture of home-made toys and knick- 
knacks destined to coax the cash from humbugged 
pockets. 

It was in the Pierce campaign that two dolls were 
dressed to represent the opposing candidates. These 
were put up at auction and certain enthusiastic poli- 
ticians added fifty dollars to the coffers of the Epis- 
copal Society by laying opposing bids, each zealous to 
outdo the other. 

At the sewing society meetings it was one of the 



202 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN 

parts and duties of the ministers to appear in the after- 
noons and to stay to tea. This ordeal was manfully un- 
dergone by each and all of them. 

The donation parties were contemporary with the 
sewing societies. I think Webster's definition of hum- 
bug fitted them exactly — " an imposition under fair pre- 
tences." It woiild be whispered, in confidence, of 
course, that hemlock and chestnut wood, most despised 
as fuel by knowing housekeepers, were plentiful at the 
bottom of the loads given by the fanners ; that the bar- 
rels of apples, potatoes and turnips did not always ful- 
fil their fair promise to the eye. 

These donation parties were free to all, and every- 
body went to them, most partaking of the supper pro- 
vided for by the provisions donated. Not infrequently 
it was the case that all the food brought in was eaten 
up, the guests having,. like the locusts of Egypt, de- 
voured every green thing, except the parson and his 
wife. Kissing games were the favorite amusements, 
and the rafters rang with the chromatic concord of 

" The needle's eye that doth supply 
The thread that passes through. 
I have caught many and many a lass, 
And now I have caught you." 

Or this ditty : 

"Green grows the rushes O, 
Kiss her quick and let her go, 
Never mind the mitten." 

Sometimes when the plan of the rooms allowed it, 
"foot races round the chimney" made things lively. 
The Rev. Mr. Perkins forbade kissing at his house, ex- 
cept by near connections. As he did not, like the 
English prayer book, particularize, it was thought at 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 203 

first practicable to invent relationships. But it proved 
not so easy to hoodwink the parson and his donation 
parties declined in popularity, no doubt to his much 
contentment. 

Very seldom did the gifts compensate for what was 
broken, trampled upon, and wasted at these annual 
sanctioned parsonage frolics. Mrs. Harvey Miller had, 
on such an occasion, a counterpane of rare and valuable 
work, an inheritance from her mother, entirely ruined 
by the treatment of the careless young people. 

But donation parties are of the things that were of 
the olden time. The old fashioned sewing society is 
superannuated. Nor, though he travel far, will the 
seeker find the prim parlor or "front room " True, 
the brass andirons have been hunted out of the garrets, 
polished anew and given places of honor; but they 
blink in astonishment at their modern environments. 
Merely to catalogue what is now required for the proper 
furnishment of our numerous church parlors would 
make a chapter to itself. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

BOOKS. 

OEVENTY years ago the question: " Who reads an 
*^ American book?" might have been truthfully an- 
swered, "There are none to read." The only books 
worth much were from the mother country. A book 
once obtained was a cherished possession. Apropos of 
this, the editor of the "Notes and Queries" in Boston 
Transcript told me about the introduction of Scott's 
" Lady of the Lake " into his home when he was a boy. 
He is now a man over seventy. 

His mother was, as women in those days were com- 
pelled to be, an industrious person. She had made a 
stint for herself for her each day's spinning. She was 
very fond of reading, but books were few and leisure 
hours were fewer. She heard of the advent of the new 
volume, Scott's " Lady of the Lake," in the neighbor- 
hood, and she longed to read it. The only way to se- 
cure the coveted opportunity was to do double work for 
the day. She rose earlier and worked later, and thus 
secured a holiday to ride on horseback a number of 
miles and borrow the precious volume. She and the 
children were made happy for a week with it, when it 
was returned ; but not before she had learned the con- 
tents by heart, thus securing them to herself. 

Sixty years ago the only large collections of books in 
Meriden were owned by Dr. Hough and Fenner Bush. 
Dr. Hough inherited a small medical library from his 
father, Dr Ensign Hough. These, except the works 
of Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia, were English editions. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 205 

Among the Doctor's books were English library edi- 
tions of Richardson's "Pamela," and Miss Burney's 
" Camilla" and '• Evelina. " Each edition, in six vol- 
umes, bound in calf and gilt. 

Dean Swift had a place, and Smollet, Fielding and 
Sterne. As no restriction in regard to these was laid 
upon me, I read, I think, all of them. This was hazard- 
ous, but the coarse allusions I did not understand, and 
therefore they were to me harmless. 

"Don Quixote," "The Arabian Nights," " Paradise 
Lost," " The Pilgrims' Progress," and a satire in verse 
by Samuel Butler, called "Hudibras," the latter only to 
be found in some large libraries, came and went through 
my childish eyes and brain. 

" The American Lady's Preceptor " was (and is) an- 
other favorite. This was published in Baltimore in 
1 82 1, and had then reached its ninth edition. Of this 
book I have never seen a copy, except the one in my 
own possession. " The Columbian Orator " had its day, 
and "The National Preceptor" had, in 1836, taken its 
place as a reading book in some of the district schools. 
Dr. Hough and Mr. Bush bought all the new books as 
they came out. 

I remember "Tillman's Journal," and " Fanny Kem- 
ble's Diary," the record — and a prejudiced one — of her 
earliest stage experiences in America. 

Children's books were few. All that were good for 
anything were English. Mrs. Sherwood's "Tales and 
Tracts," and those of her sister, Mrs. Cameron, were 
beloved in my childhood. Even now, I think, they have 
never been excelled as examples of a good, pure style. 
Mrs. Barbauld's " Hymns in Prose " was popular in the 
Saturday afternoon school exercises of the day. A class 
of girls would stand up and recite at the top of their 



206 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

shrill voices, with all the strength of their healthy young 
lungs, their lithe, young bodies clad in long aprons, 
swaying in time to the rhythm of the words, these 
cheerful and appropriate sentences: "Child of Mor- 
tality, whence earnest thou? Why is thy countenance 
sad, and thine eyes red with weeping? " "I have seen 
the rose in its beauty ; it blushed upon its stem ; its fra- 
grance perfumed the breeze; I looked, and lo, it was 
gone!" 

Sunday School libraries had been established, but all 
the books were of a severely religious character. Most 
of them were biographies of impossible little prigs, 
who, of course, died early. 

In 1846, Mrs. Sigourney, of Hartford, had begun to 
write for children and young people. Her "Child's 
Book on the Soul " was one of my earliest birthday 
souvenirs. This book was embellished with woodcuts. 
One intended to convey the idea of Eternity clearly to 
a child's mind, was a picture of a square pile of slates, 
the upper layer covered with short lines — ten thousand, 
I think — the rest, of course, left to the imagination. 

I do not see why, after allowing Smollet and Field- 
ing, the guardian authorities should have forbidden 
and tried to prevent, the reading of "The Mysteries of 
Udolpho," " The Romance of the Forest," "The Chil- 
dren of the Abbey," and " Alonzo and Melissa." It 
was, I think, only the prohibition that made these so 
charming. I doubt if the most omnivorous novel reader 
of to-day could, or would, wade through the dreary 
nonsense. The heroes and heroines of those old nov- 
els got themselves out of one critical state of affairs 
into another with marvelous and idiotic celerity. Long 
and high-flown colloquy took turnabout with duels, 
floods of tears and fainting fits. The warm velvets and 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 207 

furs of the modern novel were lacking. Instead, the 
lachrymose heroine wore, in all weathers, white mus- 
lin, once in a while putting on "a lace cloak," by way 
of comfort. The tantalizing make-believe banquets, 
now spread for us, would have been much too gross for 
those refined beings. A " slight refection " was appar- 
ently sufificient for a lifetime. 

About 1836 Miss Malone introduced " Peter Parley's 
History and Geography " into the private school. The 
lessons were interesting, and children easily learned 
them, and, more than that, remembered what they had 
learned. 

. Speaking of school books, an extract from a letter 
written by Mrs. Edgar Munson, of Williamsport, Pa., 
will be interesting. The incident occurred in Meriden 
in the late twenties: 

" There were humbugs in those days. Human na- 
ture in all ages has a relish for them. 

" ' Hall's Grammar ' is now a tradition and a warning. 
About 1829, I should think, while the old Baptist 
church stood on the east side of the street, a man made 
his appearance with a small grammar, not nearly as 
large as a child's first reader — a miniature compared 
with Lindley Murray's then in use — and introduced this 
book on a stand in front of the pulpit, proclaiming to a 
crowded house, ' The study of grammar made easy; a 
perfect knowledge of the system acquired from this 
book in a week's time; he had but a hundred copies 
at a dollar apiece. Now was the time or never. 
No press could furnish any more of the kind. ' 

' ' People were now well brought to a sense of present 
advantage and a last opportunity. All the town digni- 
taries were present. 

" Dr. Hough approved the book, and when the Rev. 



2o8 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN, 

Mr. Hinsdale stepped up, and with a few appropriate re- 
marks laid down his own silver dollar, there was such a 
rush as was never seen in a sanctuary to receive the 
article, which the audience whispered to each other, 
was ' going like hot cakes. ' 

" Wives exhorted their better halves ' to make haste, 
or they would all be gone. ' Not one book was left to 
enlighten the absent. The man left town with his one 
hundred silver dollars, I can see ' Hall's Grammar ' 
before my eyes to this day and the chagrin I felt when, 
to my request for a new grammar, the economy of 
making the misspent silver dollar tell was the result, " 

This was, as Mrs, Munson says, in the old Baptist 
church. When the new one (the Second) was built by 
the cemetery, one room of the basement was above the 
ground, and this was utilized as a favorite place for pri- 
vate schools. 

Miss Eddy, the Rev. Mr. Atwell and the Rev. Mr, 
Howard had schools in it, the gentlemen only for a 
very short time each. They were Baptist clergymen. 
I think the Rev. Elijah Guion, an Episcopal clergy- 
man, tried and failed in the attempt to keep one there. 

After the present church was built the deserted 
building became the Meriden Academy. 

Late in the thirties, one Edward Greene shot meteor- 
wise across our literary horizon. He started, probably, 
the first newspaper in Meriden, I do not remember 
the name of it, and do not think anybody does. Greene 
began in his paper a story called the "Belles of Meriden. " 

For five or six weeks the young people, more especi- 
ally, were kept on tiptoe with expectation at what was 
coming next. By this time, Greene, finding himself 
getting into rather deep water, brought the story, and 
I believe, his paper, to a close, by saying that " some- 
body had made off with the article," 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

AN ANCIENT LETTER. 

OOMETIME in the latter half of the seventies Daniel 
*^ Johnson bought a tract which included a part or 
the whole of West Peak. He probably made the pur- 
chase for its supposed mineral wealth. His son Israel 
inherited the property and built thereupon the finest 
mansion in the vicinity. The " Johnson house " stands 
on the high ground at the west side of the city of Mer- 
iden. This ridge extends irregularly, but continuously 
to the East and West rock in New Haven. 

The Johnson family were among the earliest comers 
into the town. Dr. Hough used to tell of their advent 
with their " equipage." The vehicle thus dignified by 
the doctor was a two-wheeled gig with a canvas top. 
An old carriage exactly like it was shown at a Middle- 
sex county fair early in the nineties. 

The social position of the family was excellent. The 
father was a trial justice in colonial times. Besides the 
" equipage " other possessions of theirs impressed the 
the townspeople with their quality. Silver, cut glass, 
and china shone on the sideboard, and on the almost 
sacred table linen, displayed whenever they gave a for- 
mal tea party. I remember the daughters, Miss Huldah 
and Miss Amanda, two formal old maids, who might 
have stepped bodily out of Mrs. Gaskell's " Cranford." 
Miss Huldah, when dressed for paying or receiving 
visits, always wore black silk mitts which covered her 
hands to the base of the fingers, leaving them bare. X. 
have in memory a very distinct picture of her as she sat 

14 



2IO RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

very upright, the black silk mitts on her hands, and her 
fingers — not her hands, her fingers — crossed with pre- 
cision, as she gave out " from the chair, " her opinion 
that red flannel was " very conducive to health." The 
mother was an invalid, and was as formal and precise 
as her daughters. I was never a guest at one of the 
formal tea parties given by the sisters, but I used to 
hear my elders tell of these functions How Miss 
Amanda would receive the guests and conduct them to 
the chairs especially allotted to them, the minister hav- 
ing the seat of honor, the minister's wife next, while 
Miss Huldah, at the sideboard, delicately poured and 
mixed and combined the odorous contents of the cut 
glass decanters into the cut glass wine glasses. The 
minister and his wife were always the first served. 

It would seem that neither were averse or reluctant 
to partake of such refreshment or uninstructed as to the 
quality or potency of the liquids thus dispensed. After 
a solemn revel of this order, the whilom guests used to 
chant, antiphonally, the excellence of the vnands — the 
ethereal texture of the cream biscuit, the graciousness 
of waffles and honey, and the translucence of jellies and 
conserves brought to perfection by secret and carefully 
guarded rules and recipes. 

A note written by Miss Huldah Johnson, to her 
cousin. Miss Louisa Johnson, is a very fair specimen of 
the familiar style of a hundred years ago. It may be 
explained that the young ladies lived only three or four 
miles apart. The letter is kindly furnished the writer 
by Mrs. Edgar Munson of Williamsport, Pa., whose 
mother, Mrs. Amos Curtis, was the " dear cousin." 

"March 8, 1812. 

"Dear Cousin: — The bright monarch of the day ap- 
pears just above the eastern hills to remind us of our 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 211 

duty to our benefactor, ourselves and surrounding 
friends. While the sun sheds its revivifying influences 
on our fallen world, how many important truths do we 
learn — that of being up and doing while the day lasts. 
As the poet says • 

' Count that day lost whose low descending sun 
Views from thy hand no worthy action done.' 

I read, and reprove myself for my legion of faults and 
errors and ingratitude. Gratitude, my friend, doubles 
every blessing of heaven and every enjoyment in life. 
It gives a new tone to our minds; it directs us to 
acquire happiness from unseen things which are laid in 
store for those that put their trust in the Lord Jesus. 
The winged moments of time remind us of the transient 
nature of earthly enjoyments. Soon we shall reach the 
ultimate end for which we were made. Soon we shall 
set to rise no more. Our journey being finished, we are 
prepared to say : ' Now, lettest thy servant depart in 
peace, our eyes having seen thy salvation.' May our 
lives be perfected in every good work, acquiring self- 
knowledge and self-government. When I see you we 
will talk of the importance of what I have stated. In 
the m,eantime, remember me at the throne of grace. 
Write me often, and put me under obligations to you. 
It is not my design to make imcle impatiently wait for 
my comments upon the honored visit he had conde- 
scended to make; the medium of words is insufficient 
were I to attempt to describe the satisfaction. Do en- 
courage the visiting, and hope we shall soon see you. 
My kind remembrance to all. 

" From your cousin, 

" HuLDAH Johnson." 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

AND LAST. 

nPHE year 1799 opened with the wonderful turnpike 
^ road completed between New York and Boston. 
The citizens of Meriden were elated with the prospect 
of good things to be brought to them by the new sys- 
tem of rapid transit. The stages brought glimpses of 
city fashions as the passengers stopped at the famous 
•* Hough's Tavern," the " Halfway House," to dine or 
sleep; for the journey of two hundred miles was 
thought a long and arduous one, and feeble folk were 
fain to rest on the way. People built houses along the 
great new road with "modern improvements," and en- 
vironed them with fruit trees and flowering shrubs 
grown from stock brought over the sea from English 
homes. For thirty years the town grew slowly, yet 
there was an advance of prosperity. 

Dr. Hough, James L. Brooks (afterwards Judge 
Brooks), Major Elisha Allen Cowles, Patrick Lewis and 
Elias Holt had each built handsome and commodious 
houses Lewis built the house owned by Eli Birdsey, 497 
Broad street. Holt built the house owned by Mrs. Rus- 
sell Coe, 283 East Main street. In 1836 an enterprising 
Hartford baker sent, once each month, a wagon with 
crackers and cookies into town ; and a merchant with 
advanced ideas had often a whole box of oranges on 
hand at once. Young ladies went to the Hartford or 
New Haven boarding schools, returning to Meriden 
from Saturday to Monday, as the journey could be 
made by the stage in three hours. Letters came from 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 213 

Boston or New York in thirty-six hours. In 1836 let- 
ters sent from Meriden to Middlebury, eighteen miles 
west were a week in transit, and the postage was "nine- 
pence," — twelve and a half cents. 

In the first half of the century the " emancipation of 
women " was in the future. They were themselves 
mainly responsible for the unwritten but rigid rules re- 
lating to dress. She was a woman of courage who 
would venture to violate or even to infringe upon these 
oral laws. For one thing, a matron of thirty must 
wear a cap, or be considered a vain and frivolous per- 
son. A dress cap of 1836 was an impressive structure 
of puflEs and frills with loops and bows of wire stiffened 
ribbon and floating lappets and strings. Jewelry was 
not permitted, unless an exception was made in respect 
of a gold watch. Diamonds were never seen, although 
one family had in possesion a diamond stock buckle, 
and a pair of shoe buckles. It must be noted these 
were for masculine adornment, and although the day 
had hardly gone when professional men were brave in 
frilled shirt bosoms and wrist ruffles, for woman such 
vain frippery as lace frills at the neck or wrists was 
not permitted. A muslin kerchief neatly folded and 
crossed on the bosom was the proper finish to a de- 
corous costume. As the limitations in apparel were of 
the sex's own setting there was, of course, in them no 
trial or grievance — at any rate worth mentioning. The 
real hardship for a married woman was in the laws de- 
priving her of rights in property which she had in- 
herited or had helped to get together. A married 
woman had practically no right in her husband's 
wealth, except by his will. A woman might manage 
her husband and all his concerns for a lifetime, yet at 
his death she was judged incapable of taking care of 
what he left. 



214 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

An extreme case of the kind occurred at the east side 
of the town. The husband dying intestate, the property 
was so managed, that the widow, whose personal labor 
and economy had made her home one of unusual com- 
fort, was made to take as part of her " portion " two 
small rooms at the back of the house and was not 
allowed the use of the front door. Two friends visited 
her and she set her tea things on an old chest. One of 
her children when reproved for allowing this state of 
things excused it by saying, " of course it was hard for 
mother, but there was nothing wrong about it for it was 
the law." But, as was before said, this was an extreme 
case, showing, however, what the old law could be 
made to do. 

In those days St. Paul was a much quoted authority, 
and a favorite apostle of the husbands and fathers 
(lovers are pretty much the same always). 

St. Paul's prophetic soul must have looked into the 
'latter days of the nineteenth century when he felt him- 
self impelled to confess that, in some things, he did 
not speak from inspiration. There is a long step be- 
tween " Parson " Hubbard in knee breeches, long black 
silk stockings and muslin neck bands, and the clergy- 
man of 1899 in straw hat or fur cap or any other com- 
fortable headgear, coat and trousers of fashionable cut 
and neckwear of such form and color as pleases the 
wearer thereof. The parson of 1800 made his round of 
parochial visits on horseback; he sipped with grave rel- 
ish his frequent modicum of wine or spirits, and while 
thus refreshing the inner man he made suitable inquiry 
of the "state of their soiils." He was solemn, never 
laughed in public, seldom even smiled. At each visit 
he read a chapter from the Bible and made a long 
prayer; a family would feel themselves slighted were 






RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 215 

the prayers made short. His visits were, to the chil- 
dren, a sort of sanctified nightmare, and if they saw 
him coming- they ran and hid. His Sunday sermons 
were dry, doctrinal essays, an hour in delivering, or he 
did not earn his salary. 

The minister of 1840 preached, every Sunday, two 
sermons of at least forty-five minutes; he conducted a 
Sunday school at noon, he held a Bible class towards 
night and had a service in the evening. He never took 
a vacation. A good deal was expected of him and he 
did it, and, no wonder, broke down and lost his voice. 

The minister of today finds plenty of work to do. 
Guilds, brotherhoods, societies of many names, but all 
having "church work" for an object, require his suDer- 
vision. So far as possible he keeps his mind and body 
in condition to accomplish what his position demands. 
He rides a wheel, he knows enough of secular business 
to be a good adviser. His people confide the key of 
their skeleton closet to his keeping and he holds it 
close. The children like him, he does not puzzle their 
heads with abstruse questions, nor are they made to 
"stand up and say their verses," for which mercy he 
and they ought to be devoutly thankful. He plays ball 
with his Sunday-school boys — and he can beat them if 
he wants to. Even farther and still farther into the 
past the old days are drifting. With them are passing 
the old prejudices with their ineffable Pharisaism. 

In the sixties a leading Congregational paper gravely 
warned its readers against a recognition of Christmas, 
or Lent, or Easter, as a "tendency toward Popery." 
The Meriden Christmas of 1842 saw one poor little 
church decked in Christmas green, hemlock and laurel, 
proud of its new four hundred dollar organ. The 
Christmas of 1898 sees twenty churches vying with 



2l6 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

each other in arch and pillar, pulpit and platform and 
altar wreathed with woven vines and berried holly from 
Southern lands. The great organs that uphold vested 
choirs and trained voices in anthem and chant and 
psalm, have cost more than four times four thousand 
dollars. 

In all the churches the Lenten season will be, at least, 
recognized. On the other hand the season will be less 
rigorously kept by the sects to whom the observance 
was once peculiar. By all, Easter will be heralded with 
heaped up lilies and roses and hyacinths, where once 
no flower had a place within chancel, or on altar or 
platform. Denominational exclusiveness is being done 
away with. In works of charity and mercy, in pur- 
poses and motives for future public advantage, all 
the religious sects work together, "owning one Master." 

Sometime in the fifties. Bishop Clark of Rhode Island 
lectured in the old Broad street Methodist church. The 
lecture was " Fifty Years Hence." It was, of course, 
witty. One sentence, and one only, of that lecture, is 
now recalled. The bishop used the words " going from 
New York to San Francisco in four days." This was 
greeted with a chorus of laughter. Yet the prediction 
is fulfilled, or nearly, 

A walk of a mile shows windows heaped with tawny 
golden globes, and great clusters of grapes hang heavy 
and plump with juices fresh as when they were gathered 
from vines growing upon the shores of the Pacific 
ocean. 

As I bring to a close these desultory records and 
memories of a " dear dead day," old scenes crowd upon 
my mental sight and are loath to leave me. I believe, 
as I walk abroad, I shall go in the old irregular grassy 
paths and shall traverse the old uneven streets. The 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 217 

East cemetery is again a bare upland meadow, and near 
the bars that lead into it is the barnlike Methodist 
<:hurch, with its bare wooden benches and packing box 
pulpit. To this house, one bleak, snowy January day, 
queer " Preacher " Baldwin brought his infant child to 
be baptized by himself, his wife the only witness. He 
had the grace and mercy to borrow a bowl of warm 
water. Here, too, Kate Andrews and the two insepar- 
able Francis's "played church." As a theatre for their 
histrionic accomplishments the building did not long re- 
main It was bought by Horace Redfield, moved onto 
Curtis street and made into a joiner's shop. It was finally 
set on fire by some children playing in the old pulpit, 
and was burned to the ground. The house at present 
the home of Frank Treat South wick stands pretty nearly 
on the spot. 

The old Broad street cemetery has once more the 
Baptist and the Episcopal churches, the school house 
and the old hearse house at each corner, with the low 
stone wall between. The long line of posts and chains 
front the grassy path between the churches where the 
churchgoers fasten their horses. The poor beasts, im- 
patient with the four or five hours standing, kick and 
squeal and fight, and go altogether as much on a ram- 
page as their tether will allow. This varies the Sunday 
monotony, besides giving the not at all reluctant owners 
an excuse for cutting short the afternoon sermon. 

Once more at St. Andrew's, Edwin Curtis gives, on 
his bass viol the keynote for chant and psalm and hymn. 
I go up the high steps into the Baptist church, where, 
once upon a time, at an ordination, " Uncle Sam " 
Yale, zealous for the success of the musical programme 
and distrusting, as even the most competent sometimes 
do, his own and Captain Howard's skill on bass viol and 



2l8 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN, 

double bass, seized an opportune, but at that time very 
rare, hand organ, had it conveyed into the choir, and a 
voluntary performed on the instrument to the much sat- 
isfaction of the listeners thereto. The time moves on ; 
the clear tones of the Rev. Harvey Miller's voice ring 
out as he preaches, what, in his daily life, he practices, 
the Gospel of Peace. The little, white building, the 
first St. Andrew's, is now the mission where has since 
grown the stately buildings of St. Rose's Parish. Fair 
in its proportions, rises, at the corner of Charles street, 
the coveted stone church, the second St. Andrew's. 
Here, the Rev. Dr. Deshon began his ministry of more 
than thirty years. From out its chancel Bishop Brown- 
ell, worn with cares, bowed with years, went for the 
last time, and Bishop Williams entered in the prime of 
manhood, tall and commanding in person, impressive in 
manner. 

But Memory, the showman, has withdrawn the can- 
vas, and all the ground is empty space. The portal of 
the Center church is not altered. It is the same as 
when it was built seventy years ago, but, when I enter, 
I find a change in the once familiar precincts. A plat- 
form and choir seats and the great organ take the place 
of the crimson-draped pulpit, from which in 1849, the 
Rev. G. W. Perkins preached a farewell sermon to the 
party who left Meriden for the gold fields of California, 
from the depressive text, " Weep ye not for the dead, 
neither bemoan him ; but weep sore for him that goeth 
away, for he shall return no more, nor see his native 
country." Sorrowful words and significant ; for of 
those who left Meriden that night, some were left in 
lonely graves ; others had no wish to see again their 
"native country" and made new home-ties. None re- 
turned rich save in experience. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 219 

When, early in the thirties, William Lawrence, of 
Meriden, invented a hanging lamp with a glass shade, 
in which whale oil displaced candles, it was thought a 
far stride in the world's progress. Burning fluid, kero- 
sene and gas, each in their turn, have followed the 
whale oil lamps ; now in this year of grace, 1899, the 
forces of nature are concentrated, and with a touch, 
street and avenue, hall and audience room, are flooded 
with cool, brilliant light. Nor is the time distant when 
the electric fluid will lighten all domestic labor, and the 
smoke and ashes and grime of coal in our kitchens be a 
forgotten nuisance. 

The substantial and elegant stone dwelling house 
(the home of Francis Atwater of The Jolirnal) sIsltiAs 
in the place of the old " Hough tavern. " Four times 
each hour the electric cars pass the house, and cross the 
road where before them, twice each day, the lumbering 
stages swung clumsily up to the piazza at the old 
hosfelry. 

The old Broad Street cemetery has been opened, it 
is likely, for the last time. Within the last ten years 
three aged women have been buried there The last 
was taken there by her dying wish that she might be 
buried by the side of her little child, who dropped from 
her arms and never grew up; who, for sixty years, 
had always been her baby girl. 

When, in 1845, the East cemetery was laid out, it 
was supposed ainple allowance for the future had been 
made. Ira N. Yale took great interest in the project, 
and it was through his influence that the principal ave- 
nues were bordered by flowering shrubs, altheas, most 
of them. The expense of building the stone arch at 
the entrance was very seriously objected to by the 
citizens on the west side of town, and I believe it was 



220 RECOLLKCTIONS OF A NEW ENGFAND TOWN. 

partly for this reason the West cemetery was planned. 
When the location was chosen it was talked of as being 
quite isolated. 

The first interment in it was a little child. On a very 
plain headstone in a crowded part of the groimd, is the 

inscription : 

" Her name was EUah, 
And by this silent grave she passed away." 

For a while the little grave was a lonely one. 

The brilliant electric light throws long shadows from 
the elm branches over the graves of men and women 
who rose while it was dark and were lighted by dim 
candles to their early labors. By candlelight they read 
their one weekly religious newspaper carefully, accept- 
ing everything therein printed as articles of faith. 

The summers and the winters followed each other as 
surely with them as with us, but time seemed to move 
more slowly then. In those days events did not crowd 
each other. So they did the work of each season as it 
came, not worrying overmuch or hurrying at all, but 
making a virtue of hard labor, and a vice of "taking 
things easy." To find something to do and to work 
hard to get the thing done was, to them, the whole duty 
of man. For all that, commonplace as those lives 
seemed in their passing, now that it is all over and done 
with, a plain narrative of all that lies buried out of 
sight in the old Broad street burial place would make 
an emotional tale almost too improbable for belief. 

Under the yellow myrtle and the purple asters lie those 
who despaired of life in the bitterness of disappointed 
ambition ; who endured the weary waiting of hope de- 
ferred or the grief for friends lost, or changed, or dead. 
The gladness of fulfilled promises was theirs in their 
time, and upon some of them fell that most hopeless 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 22 1 

and most heartbreaking of all the disappointments of 
life — "the curse of a granted prayer." 

We try to consider how, if they could suddenly be 
quickened into our everyday life, they would look 
upon the changed world about them. Nothing familiar 
to the eye when they went away would their amazed 
gaze rest upon — except, perhaps, the mountains, and 
upon their steep fells the finger of time has written. 

The year 1899 opens with the little town of three 
thousand grown into the city of nearly thirty thousand 
people. 

It finds the Meriden Hospital permanently founded, 
with increasing appliances for future useful work. 

A Free Public Library is hopefully initiated, with 
tokens of prosperity in the new century. 

Cultivated discernment has found rare possibilities in 
the wild steep mountain side that liberal wealth is rap- 
idly turning into a benison for the city, and not for the 
city alone, but almost equally for the adjacent towns. 

Hubbard Park is beautiful now, when it is yet in its 
early days; very unique, even sublime, are the natural 
features of the locality. Rare and admirable is the far- 
sighted munificence which has moved the donor to de- 
velop their beauties, and to confer upon the city so 
large a benefaction. 

When the years of the future have drifted far into 
the past, and the nineteenth century has become the 
" Olden Days, "this great gift will be — so long as the 
"Hanging Hills" guard the city — an acquisition of 
good, growing in utility of possession to future genera- 
tions. 

As I bring to an end these traditions of more than a 
century and a half, more than sixty years my own per- 
sonal memories, I feel a vexatious conviction that, after 



222 RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

all, I have omitted many things not less of interest 
than much I have written. 

Our beautiful city has sons and daughters in every 
State in the Union, who think of its hills with love, 
longing for their early home. From the shores of the 
Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, and far away to the 
northern line, hundreds know the name only as the 
home of their ancestors, whose dust lies under the turf 
of our cemeteries. 



